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THE 


HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND 


FROM  THE 


ACCESSION  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND. 


BY 


LORD   MACAULAY. 

EIGHT  VOUBIES  IN  FOUR. 
VOLS.  I.  &  II. 


NEW   YORK: 

PUBLISHED   BY  HURD  AND   HOUGHTON. 

(JCanibriUflc:  ISlfbersflie  ^tess. 

1876. 


I 

4 


RIVERSIDE,   CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED     AND    PRINTED    BY 

H.   0.   UOOaHTON   AKB    COMPANY. 


I 


Clje  OTorfi^  of  iLorD  itiacaula^* 


HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND. 

VOL.  I. 


CONTENTS 


OF 


THE    FIRST    VOLUME. 


CHAPTER  I. 

rAcn 

Introduction 1 

Britain  under  tUe  Romans 4 

Britain  under  the  iSaxons  ......  5 

Effect  of  the  Conversion  of  the  Saxons  to  Chinstianity  .       6 

Danish  Invasions         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         10 

The  Normans 11 

The  Norman  Conquest  and  its  Effects        ....         14 

Effects  of  the  Separation  of  England  and  Normandy    .         .16 
Amalgamation  of  Races     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         17 

Conquests  of  the  English  on  the  Continent    .         .         .         .20 

Wars  of  the  Roses     ........         28 

Extinction  of  Villenage         .......     24 

Beneficial  Operation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Religion         .         25 
The  Nature  of  the   ancient  English  Government  often  mis- 
represented, and  why  .         •         .         .         .  .27 

Description  of  the  liniitcid  IMonarchies  of  the  Middle  Ages  81 

Prerogatives  of  the  ancient  English  Kings  how  limited       .         82 
The  Limitations  not  always  strictly  observed,  and  why  .     33 

Resistance  an  ordinary   Check  on   Tyranny  in   the  JSIIddle 

A<ies        .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         37 

Peculiar  Character  of  the  English  Aristocracy       .         .         .41 
The  Covcnuncnt  of  the  Tudors  .         .         .         .         .         43 

The  limited  I\Ionarchi(>s  of  the  Middle  Ages  generally  turned 

into  absolute  Monarchies,  and  why      .         .         .         .46 

The  English  Monarchy  a  singular  Exception,  and  why       .         47 
The  Reformation  and  its  EO'ects    ......     49 


VI  CONTENXa 

Origin  of  the  Church  of  England 66 

Her  peculiar  Character  .         .         .         .         .         .         .57 

The  Relation  in  which  she  stood  to  the  Crown   ...         59 
The  Puritans         ....  ....     64 

Their  Republican  Spirit     .......         66 

No  systematic  Parliamentary  Opposition  offered  to  the  Gov- 
ernment of  Elizabeth,  and  why  .         .         .         .67 

The  Question  of  the  Monopolies         .....         69 

Scotland  and  Ireland  become  Parts  of  the  same  Empire  with 

England 70 

Diminution  of  the  Importance  of  England  after  the  Accession 

of  James  the  First  .......  76 

The  Doctrine  of  Divine  Right       .         .         .         .         .         .77 

The  Separation  between  the  Church  and  the  Puritans  be- 
comes wider    ........         82 

Accession  and  Character  of  Charles  the  First  .  .  .91 
Tactics  of  the  Opposition  in  the  House  of  Commons  .         92 

Petition  of  Right 93 

The  Petition  of  Right  violated ;  Character  and  Designs  of 

Wentworth 95 

Character  of  Laud         ........     96 

The  Star  Chamber  and  High  Commission  •         ...         98 
Shipmoney    ..........     99 

Resistance  to  the  Liturgy  in  Scotland         .         .         .         .       101 

A  Parliament  called  and  dissolved  .         .         .         .         .  1 04 

The  Long  Parliament        .         .         .         .         .         .         .106 

The  first  Appearance  of  the  two  great  English  Parties  .  108 

The  Irish  Rebellion 115 

The  Remonstrance         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .117 

The  Impeachment  of  the  Five  Members    .         .         .         .       119 

Departure  of  Charles  from  London        .         .         .         .         .120 

Commencement  of  the  Civil  War 1 24 

Successes  of  the  Royalists      .         .         .         .         .         .         .127 

Rise  of  the  Independents  .         .  ....       128 

Oliver  Cromwell 129 

The  Self-denying  Ordinance  ;  Victory  of  the  Parliament  .  130 
Domination  and  Character  of  the  Army  .  .  .  .132 
Risings  against  the  Military  Government  suppressed  .  .  135 
The  Proceeding  against  the  King  .         .         .         .         .136 

His  Execution   ...  .....       140 


CONTENTS. 


VU 


Subjugation  of  Ireland  and  Scotland         .        .        . 
Expulsion  of  the  Long  Parliament      \         .         . 
The  Protectorate  of  Oliver        ..... 

Oliver  succeeded  by  Richard         .... 

Fall  of  Richard  and  Revival  of  the  Long  Parliament 

Second  Expulsion  of  the  Long  Parliament    . 

Monk  and  the  Army  of  Scotland  march  into  England 

Monk  declares  for  a  free  Parliament 

General  Election  of  1660.         .         .         .         .         . 

The  Restoration     ....... 


PAQI 

142 
144 
148 
153 
157 
158 
159 
162 
163 
164 


CHAPTER  IL 

The  Conduct  of  those  who  restored  the  House  of  Stuart  un- 
justly censured         .         .         .         .         .         .         .166 

Abolition  of  the  Tenures  by  Knight  Service  .         .         .168 

Disbanding  of  the  Army    .         .         .         .         .         .  ■       .       169 

Disputes  between  the  Roundheads  and  Cavaliers  renewed     .  170 
Religious  Dissension  .         .         .         .         .         .         .173 

Uni)opularity  of  the  Puritans         .         .         .         .         .         .176 

Character  of  Charles  the  Second        .....        184 

Characters  of  the  Duke  of  York  and  Earl  of  Clarendon        .  1 88 

General  Election  of  1661 192 

Violence  of  the  Cavaliers  in  the  new  Parliament  .         .         .193 
Persecution  of  the  Puritans        .         .         .         .  .         .194 

Zeal  of  the  Church  for  Iiereditary  Monarchy  .         .         .195 

Change  in  the  Morals  of  the  Coummnity   ....       197 

Prodigacv  of  the  Politicians  of  that  Age        .         .         .         .199 

State  of  Scotland 202 

State  of  Ireland 205 

The  Government  becomes  unpopular  in  England       .         .       206 

War  with  the  Dutch 210 

Opposition  in  the  House  of  Commons         .         .         .         .212 

Fall  of  Clarendon 213 

State  of  European  Politics,  and  Ascendency  of  France     .       217 

Character  of  Lewis  the  Fourteenth 219 

The  Triple  Alliance 222 

The  Country  Party 223 

Connc(;tion  between  Charles  the  Second  and  France         .       225 
Views  of  Lewis  with  respect  to  England        .         .  .  227 


♦ffi  CONTENTS. 

risi 

Treaty  of  Dover .230 

Nature  of  the  Englisli  Cabinet ......       232 

The  Cabal 233 

Shutting  of  the  Exchequer         .         .         .         .         •         .237 
War  with  the  United  Provinces  and  their  extreme  Danger      238 

William  Prince  of  Orange 239 

Meeting  of  the  Parliament :  Declaration  of  Indulgence     .       242 
It  is  cancelled,  and  the  Test  Act  passed         ....  244 

The  Cabal  dissolved  ;  Peace  with  the  United  Provinces     .       246 
Administration  of  Danby       .         .         .         .         .         .         .247 

Embarrassing  Situation  of  the  Country  Party    .         .         .        250 
Dealings  of  that  Party  with  the  French  Embassy  .         .251 

Peace  of  Nimeguen  ........       252 

Violent  Discontents  in  England     ......  253 

Fall  of  Dauby 255 

The  Popish  Plot 256 

First  General  Election  of  1679 260 

Violence  of  the  new  House  of  Commons        .         .         .         .202 
Temple's  Plan  of  Government  .         .         .         .         .263 

Character  of  Halifax 267 

Character  of  Sunderland  .......        271 

Prorogation  of  the  ParHament ;  Habeas  Corpus  Act      .         .  273 
Second  General  Election  of  1679  ;  Popularity  of  Monmouth  274 
Lawrence  Hyde         ........       279 

Sidney  Godolphin  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .281 

Violence  of  Factions  on  the  Subject  of  the  Exclusion  Bill ; 

Names  of  Whig  and  Tory 282 

Meeting  of  Parliament;  the  Exclusion  Bill  passes  the  Com- 
mons .........   284 

Exclusion  Bill  rejected  by  the  Lords  ....       285 

Execution  of  Stafford  ;  General  Election  of  1681  .         .  286 

Parliament  held  at  Oxford  and  dissolved    .         .         .         .287 

Tory  Reaction 288 

Persecution  of  the  Whigs 29^ 

The  Charter  of  the  City  confiscated;  Whig  Conspiracies      .  292 
Detection  of  the  Whig  Conspiracies ;  Severity  of  the  Gov- 
ernment ........       2(K5 

Seizure  of  Charters       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         ,296 

Tnlluence  of  the  Duke  of  York 298 

He  is  opposed  by  Halifax 299 


CONTENTS. 


IZ 


PAGI 

301 


Lord  Keeper  Guildford     .        .        . 

Policy  of  Lewis     .........  304 

State  of  Factions  in  the  Court  of  Charles  at  the  Time  of  his 

Death 305 


CHAPTER   III. 

Grnat  Change  in  the  State  of  Eniijland  since  1685 

Population  of  England  in  1685 

The  Increase  of  Population  greater  in  the 

South  ..... 

Revenue  in  1685        .... 
Military  System     ..... 
The  Navy  ..... 

The  Ordnance       ..... 
Noneffective  Charge 
Charge  of  Civil  Government 
Great  Gains  of  Courtiers  and  Ministers 
State  of  Agriculture      .... 
Mineral  Wealth  of  the  Country 
Increase  of  llent  .... 
The  Country  Gentlemen    . 

The  Clergy 

The  Yeomanry 

Growth  of  the  Towns;  Bristol 

Norwich     ..... 

Other  County  Towns    . 
Manchester        .... 

Leeds    .         ..... 

Shcfiield 


Birmingham  .... 

Liverpool  ..... 
Watering  places :  Cheltenham 
Brighton,  Buxton,  Tunbridge  Wells 

Bath 

London       ..... 


Tlie  City 

The  Fashionable  Part  of  the  Capital 
Police  of  London  .... 
The  Lighting  of  London    . 


North  than  in  the 


309 
310 

312 
315 
318 
327 
.S35 
336 
337 
338 
341 
347 
349 
350 
356 
367 
368 
370 
372 
373 
374 
375 
376 
377 
378 
379 
381 
382 
384 
390 
396 
397 


Z  CONTENTS. 

PAOI 

White  Friars 398 

The  Court 399 

The  Coffeehouses 402 

Difficulty  of  Travelling         .         .         ,         .         .         .         .407 

Badness  of  the  Roads 409 

Stage  Coaches 414 

Highwaymen     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .418 

Inns 421 

The  Post  Office .        .423 

The  Newspapers 425 

The  Newsletters 427 

The  Observator 429 

Scarcity  of  Books  in  Country  Places  ....       430 

Female  Education         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .431 

Literary  Attainments  of  Gentlemen  ....       433 

Influence  of  French  Literature     .         .         .         .         •         .434 

Immorality  of  the  Polite  Literature  of  England         .         .       436 
State  of  Science  in  England  ......  444 

State  of  the  Fine  Arts      .         .        .        .        .         .         .451 

State  of  the  Common  People ;  Agricultural  Wages       .         .  454 
Wages  of  Manufacturers   .         .         .         .         .         .         .457 

Labour  of  Children  in  Factories ;  Wages  of  different  Classes 

of  Artisans  ........  459 

Number  of  Paupers  .         .         .         .         .         .         -         .401 

Benefits  derived  by  the  Common  People  from  the  Progress  of 

Civilisation  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .463 

Delusion  which  leads  Men  to  overrate  the  Happiness  of  pre- 
ceding Generations  ......       466 

APPENDIX. 

Cranmer  and  the  Church  of  England 469 

A  pure  Church  without  a  Bishop 478 

Synod  of  Dort 479 

Act  of  Uniformity 479 

Nagpore  and  Oude 480 

Population 480 

Revenue  in  1863 481 

Coal 481 

The  Clergy  plebeian 48! 


CONTENTS 

OF 

THE    SECOND    VOLUME. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


Death  of  Cbarles  the  Second .9 

Suspicions  of  Poison  ........  22 

Speech  of  James  the  Second  to  the  Privy  Council         .         .  25 

James  proclaimed      ........  26 

State  of  the  Administration 28 

New  Arrangements   ........  30 

Sir  George  Jeffreys       ........  32 

The  Revenue  collected  without  an  Act  of  Parliament        .  38 
A  Parliament  called ;  Transactions  between  James  and  the 

French  King 39 

Churchill  sent  Ambassador  to  France  ;  his  History     .         .  43 

Feelings  of  the  Continental  Governments  towards  England  47 

Policy  of  the  Court  of  Rome          ......  50 

Struggle  in  the  Mind  of  James           .....  53 

Fluctuations  of  his  Policy 54 

Public  Celebration  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Rites  in  the  Palace  56 


His  Coronation  ...... 

Enthusiasm  of  the  Tories'  Addresses     . 
The  Elections    ...... 

Proceedings  against  Gates     .         .         .         , 
Proceedings  against  Dangerlield 
Proceedings  against  Baxter 
Meeting  of  the  Parliament  of  Scotland 
Feeling  of  James  towards  the  Puritans 
Cruel  Treatment  of  thc^  Scotch  Covenanters 
Feeling  of  James  towards  the  Quakers 


58 
61 
63 
68 
75 
77 
81 
83 
85 
90 


VI  CONTENTS. 

PAQB 

William  Penn 93 

Peculiar  Favour  shown  to  Roman  Catholics  and  Quakers     .       97 
Meeting  of  the  English  Parliament;  Trevor  chosen  Speaker    100 
Character  of  Seymour  .         .         .         .         .         .         .101 

The  King's  Speech  to  the  Parliament       .         .         .         .         103 

Debate  in  the  Commons  ;  Speech  of  Seymour      .         .         .104 
The  Revenue  voted ;  Proceedings  of  the  Commons  concern- 
ing Religion  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         106 

Additional  Taxes  voted ;  Sir  Dudley  North  .        .        .108 

Proceedings  of  the  Lords  .         .         .         .         .         .         110 

Bill  for  reversing  the  Attainder  of  Stafford  .         •         .         .112 


o 


CHAPTER  V. 

Whig  Refugees  on  the  Continent 114 

Their  Correspondents  in  England        .         .     *   .         .         .115 
Characters  of  the  Leading  Refugees         .        .        .        .         116 

Ayloffe;  Wade 117 

Goodenough ;  Rumbold   .         .        .        .         .        .        .         118 

Lord  Grey 119 

Monmouth 121 

Ferguson     . .         .122 

Scotch  Refugees ;  Earl  of  Argyle 1 28 

Sir  Patrick  Hume 131 

Sir  John  Cochrane  ;  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  .         .         .         132 

Unreasonable  Conduct  of  the  Scotch  Refugees    .         .         .133 
Arrangements  for  an  Attempt  on  England  and  Scotland  135 

John  Locke 137 

Preparations  made  by  the  Government  for  the  Defence  of 
Scotland ;    Conversation    of  James  with  the   Dutch 
Ambassadors     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .139 

Ineffectual  Attempts  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  of  the 

States  General  to  prevent  Ai-gyle  from  sailing       .         140 
Departure  of  Argyle  from  Holland  ;  he  lands  in  Scotland         143 
His  Disputes  with  his  Followers  ......     145 

Temper  of  the  Scotch  Nation  .....         147 

Argyle's  Forces  dispersed    .......     151 

Argyle  a  Prisoner 152 

His  Execution 159 

Execution  of  Rumbold 160 


CONTENTS.  xn 

PAGE 

Death  of  Ayloffe 162 

Devastation  of  Argyleshire  .......     163 

Ineffectual   Attempts   to  prevent  Monmouth   from   leaving 

Holland 164 

His  Arrival  at  Ljine 168 

His  Declaration 169 

His  Popularity  in  the  West  of  England  .  .  .  .170 
Encounter  of  the  Rebels  with  the  Militia  at  Bi-idport  .  173 
Encounter  of  the  Rebels  with  the  Militia  at  Axminster  .  174 
News  of  the  Rebellion  carried  to  London         .         .         .         175 

Loyalty  of  the  Parliament 176 

Reception  of  Monmouth  at  Taunton         .         .         .         .         180 

He  takes  the  Title  of  King  .         .         .         .         .         .184 

His  Reception  at  Bridgewater  .....         188 

Preparations  of  the  Government  to  oppose  him   .         .         .189 
His  Design  on  Bristol       .......  193 

He  Relinquishes  that  Design        .         .         .         .         .         .195 

Skirmish  at  Philip's  Norton      .         .         .         .         .         .         197 

Despondency  of  Monmouth  .         .         .         .         •         .198 

He  returns  to  Bridgewater ;  the  Royal  Army  encamps  at 

Sedgemoor    ........         200 

Battle  of  Sedgemoor 205 

Pursuit  of  the  Rebels 212 

Military  Executions ;  Flight  of  Monmouth  .         .         .213 

His  Capture 216 

His  Letter  to  the  King 218 

He  is  carried  to  London  ,         .         .         .         .         .         .         219 

His  Interview  with  the  King         ......     220 

His  Execution 224 

His  Memory  cherished  by  the  Common  People  .  .  .229 
Cruelties  of  the  Soldiers  in  the  West;  Kirke  .  •  .  232 
Jeffreys  sets  out  on  the  Western  Circuit       ....     238 

Trial  of  Alice  Lisle 239 

The  Bloody  Assizes 244 

Abraham  Ilohncs 248 

Christopher  Battiscombe ;  the  Hewlinga      ....     249 

Punishment  of  Tutchin 251 

Rebels  trans])orted 252 

Confiscation  and  Extortion        ......  254 

Rapacity  of  the  (iueen  and  of  her  Ladies   .  .     255 


Via  CONTENTS. 

PASS 

Cases  of  Grey  and  Cochrane  ......  259 

Cases  of  Storey,  Wade,  Goodenough,  and  Ferguson    .  .     260 
Jeffieys  made  Lord  Chancellor ;  Trial  and  Execution  of  Cor- 
nish         263 

Trials  and  Executions  of  Fernley  and  Elizabeth  Gaunt  .     266 

Trial  and  Execution  of  Bateman      .....  268 

Cruel  Pei-secution  of  the  Protestant  Dissenters     .        .  .270 

CHAPTER   VI. 

The  Power  of  James  at  the  Height  in  the  Autumn  of  1685  273 
His  Foreign  Policy      .  .         .         .         ,         .         .         .274 

His  Plans  of  Domestic  Government;  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  275 

The  Standing  Army 276 

Designs  in  favour  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Religion  .  .  278 
Violation  of  the  Test  Act         ......         283 

Disgrace  of  Halifax 284 

General  Discontent  .......         285 

Persecution  of  the  French  Huguenots  ....     286 

Effect  of  that  Persecution  in  England      ....         290 

Meeting  of  Parliament ;  Speech  of  the  King       .         .         .     291 
An  Opposition  formed  in  the  House  of  Commons      .         .         292 
Sentiments  of  i'oreign  Governments    .....     294 

Committee  of  the  Commons  on  the  King's  Speech    .         .         296 
Defeat  of  the  Government  .......     300 

Second  Defeat  of  the  Government  .....         302 

The  King  reprimands  the  Commons     .....     303 

Coke  committed  by  the  Commons  for  Disrespect  to  the  King  304 
Opposition  to  the  Government  in   the  Lords ;    the  Eai-l  of 

Devonshire    ........         305 

The  Bishop  of  London  ;  Viscount  Mordaunt        .         .         .     307 
Prorogation      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         310 

Trials  of  Lord  Gerard  and  of  Hampden      .         .         .         .311 

Trial  of  Delamcre   .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         313 

Effect  of  his  Acqiiittal         .         .         .         .         •         .         .316 

Parties  in  the  Court ;  Feeling  of  the  Protestant  Tories  .  317 
Publication  of  Papers  found  in  the  Strong  Box  of  Charles  the 

Second .         .         .319 

Feeling  of  the  respectable  Roman  Catholics  .  .  .  321 
Cabal  of  violent  Roman  Catholics  ;  Castelmaine  ;  Jermyn  .     323 


CONTENTS.  ix 

PAGE 

White;  Tyrconnel 324 

Feeling  of  the  Ministers  of  Foreign  Governments     .         .         327 
The  Pope  and  the  Order  of  Jesus  opjDosed  to  each  other      .     329 
The  Order  of  Jesus  .......         330 

Father  Petre  ;  the  King's  Temper  and  Opinions  .         .     338 

The  King  encouraged  in  his  Erroi'S  by  Sunderland  .         .         341 

Perfidy  of  Jeffreys 344 

Godolphin  ;  the  Queen     .......         345 

Amours  of  the  King ;  Catharine  Sedley       ....     346 

Intrigues  of  Rochester  in  favour  of  Catharine  Sedley         .         348 

Decline  of  Rochester's  Influence 352 

Castelmaine  sent  to  Rome 355 

The  Huguenots  ill  treated  by  James 356 

The  Dispensing  Power 359 

Dismission  of  refractory  Judges  .         .         .         .         .         .361 

Case  of  Sir  Edward  Hales 363 

Roman  Catholics  authorised  to  hold  Ecclesiastical  Benefices ; 

Sclater 365 

Walker 366 

The  Deanery  of  Christchurch  given  to  a  Roman  Catholic ; 

Disposal  of  Bishoprics 367 

Resolution   of  James   to   use   his   Ecclesiastical  Supremacy 

against  the  Church 368 

His  Difficulties 369 

He  creates  a  new  Court  of  High  Commission  .  .  .  373 
Proceedings  against  the  Bishop  of  London  .  .  .  .37  7 
Discontent  excited  by  the  public  Display  of  Roman  Catholic 

Rites  and  Vestments 379 

Riots 380 

A  Camp  formed  at  Hounslow 383 

Samuel  Johnson  .........     385 

Hugh  Speke 386 

Proceedings  against  Johnson        ......     387 

Zeal  of  the  Anglican  Clergy  against  Popery ;  Controversial 

Writings 389 

The  Roman  Catholic  Divines  overmatched  .         .         .         .391 

State  of  Scotland 393 

Queensberry ;  Perth ;  Melfort  .  .  ...  395 
Their  Apostasy 396 


X  CONTENTS. 

PAQB 

Favour  shown  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Religion  in  Scotland ; 

Riots  at  Edinburgh    ...         ...  397 

Ansier  of  the  King  ;  his  Plans  concerning  Scotland           .  399 

Deputation  of  Scotch  Privy  Councillors  sent  to  London        .  400 

Their  Negotiations  with  the  King     .         .         .         .         .  401 

Meeting  of  the  Scotch  Estates  ;  they  prove  refi-actory          .  402 
They  are  adjourned  ;  Arbitrary   System  of  Government  in 

Scotland 407 

Ireland 409 

State  of  the  Law  on  the  Subject  of  Religion        .        .         .410 

Hostility  of  Races    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  411 

The  aboriginal  Peasantry     .         .         .         .         .         .         .412 

The  aboriginal  Aristocracy       ,         .         .         .         .      ".  413 

State  of  the  English  Colony 415 

Course  which  James  ought  to  have  followed     .         .         .  417 

His  Errors 420 

Clarendon  arrives  in  Ireland  as  Lord  Lieutenant ;    his  Morti- 
fications        ........  423 

Panic  among  the  Colonists           .         .         .         .^       .  .      .  424 

Arrival  of  Tyrconnel  at  Dublin  as  General       .         .         .  427 

His  Partiality  and  Violence          ......  428 

He  is  bent  on  the  Repeal  of  the  Act  of  Settlement ;  he  re- 
turns to  England  .         .         .         .         .         .         .  430 

The  King  displeased  with  Clarendon    .....  431 

Rochester  attacked  by  the  Jesuitical  Cabal      .         .         .  432 

Attempts  of  James  to  convert  Rochester    ....  435 

Dismission  of  Rochester   .......  440 

Dismission  of  Clai-endon  ;  Tyrconnel  Lord  Deputy       .         .  442 

Dismay  of  the  English  Colonists  in  Ireland       .         .         .  445 

Effect  of  the  Fall  of  the  Hydes 446 

APPENDIX. 

Despatches  of  the  Dutch  ministers 449 

The  ChurchiUs 449 

Wodrow's  authority      .         .  .         .         .         .         ,  449 

Graham,  of  Claverhouse 450 

Narcissus  Luttrell's  Diary    ....*..  450 

William's  complicity  with  Monmouth  .         .        .  451 


HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER  I. 

I  PURPOSE  to  write  the  history  of  England  from  tho 
accession  of  King  James  the  Second  down  to  imroduc- 
a  time  whicli  is  within  the  memory  of  men   *''"'• 
still  livino;.     I  shall  recount  the  errors  whi'jh,  in  a  few 
months,  alienated  a  loyal  gentxy  and  priesthood  from 
the  House  of  Stuart.     I  shall  trace  the  course  of  that 
revolution  which  terminated  the  long  struggle  between 
our  sovereigns  and  their  parliaments,  and  bound  up 
together   the    rights  of  the   people    and   the    title   of 
the  reigning  dynasty.     I    shall   relate    how  the   new 
settlement  was,  during  many  troubled  years,  success-^ 
fully  defended  against  foreign  and  domestic  enemies  ; 
how,  under  that  settlement,  the  authority  of  law  and 
the  security  of  property  were  found  to  be  compatible 
with  a  liberty  of  discussion   and   of  individual  action 
never  befoi'e  known  ;  how,  from  the  auspicious  union 
of  order  and  freedom,  sprang  a  prosperity  of  which 
tlie  annals  of  human  affairs  had  furnished  no  example  ; 
how  our  country,  from  a  state  of  ignominious  vassalage, 
rapidly  rose  to  the  place  of  umpire  among  European 
powers  ;  how  her  opulence  and  her  martial  glory  grew 
together  ;  how,  by  wise  and  resolute  good  faith,  was 
vor,.  I.  1 


2  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

gradually  established  a  pul)lic  credit  fruitfid  of  marvels 
which  to  the  statesmen  of  any  former  ao;e  would  have 
seemed  incredible  :  how  a  irisantic  commerce  gave 
birth  to  a  maritime  power,  compared  with  which  every 
other  maritime  power,  ancient  or  modern,  sinks  into 
insignificance  ;  how  Scotland,  after  ages  of  enmity,  was 
at  length  united  to  England,  not  merely  by  legal  bonds, 
but  by  indissoluble  ties  of  interest  and  affection  ;  how, 
in  America,  the  British  colonies  rapidly  became  far 
miohtier  and  wealthier  than  the  realms  which  Cortea 
and  Pizarro  had  added  to  the  dominions  of  Charles  the 
Fifth ;  how,  in  Asia,  British  adventurers  founded  an 
empire  not  less  splendid  and  more  durable  than  that  of 
Alexander. 

Nor  will  it  be  less  my  duty  faithfully  to  record  disas- 
ters mingled  with  triumphs,  and  great  national  crimes 
and  follies  far  more  humiliating  than  any  disaster.  It 
will  be  seen  that  even  what  we  justly  account  our 
chief  blessings  were  not  without  alloy.  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  system  which  effectually  secured  our  liberties 
against  the  encroachments  of  kingly  power  gave  birth 
to  a  new  class  of  abuses  from  which  absolute  monarch- 
ies are  exempt.  It  will  be  seen  that,  in  consequence 
partly  of  unwise  interference,  and  partly  of  unwise  neg- 
lect, the  increase  of  wealth  and  the  extension  of  trade 
produced,  together  with  immense  good,  some  evils  from 
which  poor  and  rude  societies  are  free.  It  will  be 
seen  how,  in  two  important  dependencies  of  the  crown, 
wrong  was  followed  by  just  retribution  ;  how  imj)ru- 
dence  and  obstinacy  broke  the  ties  which  bound  the 
North  American  colonies  to  the  parent  state  ;  how  Ire- 
land, cursed  by  the  domination  of  race  over  race,  and 
of  relio-ion  over  religion,  remained  indeed  a  member 
of  the  empire,  but  a  withered  and  distorted  member. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE  RESTORATION.  3 

adding  no  strength  to  tlie  body  politic,  and  reproach- 
fully pointed  at  by  all  who  feared  or  envied  the  great- 
ness of  Enjrland. 

Yet,  unless  I  greatly  deceive  myself,  the  general 
effect  of  this  chequered  narrative  will  be  to  excite 
thankfulness  in  all  religious  minds,  and  hope  in  the 
breasts  of  all  patriots.  For  the  history  of  our  country 
during  the  last  hundred  and  sixty  years  is  eminently 
the  history  of  physical,  of  moral,  and  of  intellectual 
improvement.  Those  who  compare  the  age  on  which 
their  lot  has  fallen  with  a  golden  age  which  exists  only 
in  their  imagination  may  talk  of  degeneracy  and  decay : 
but  no  man  who  is  correctly  informed  as  to  the  past 
will  be  disposed  to  take  a  morose  or  desponding  view 
of  the  present. 

I  should  very  imperfectly  execute  the  task  which  I 
have  undertaken  if  I  were  merely  to  treat  of  battles 
and  sieges,  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  administrations,  of  in- 
trigues in  the  palace,  and  of  debates  in  the  parhament. 
It  will  be  my  endeavour  to  relate  the  history  of  the  peo- 
ple as  well  as  the  history  of  the  government,  to  trace 
the  progress  of  useful  and  ornamental  arts,  to  describe 
the  rise  of  religious  sects  and  the  changes  of  literary 
taste,  to  portray  the  manners  of  successive  generations, 
and  not  to  pass  by  with  neglect  even  the  revolutions 
which  have  taken  place  in  dress,  furniture,  repasts,  and 
public  amusements.  I  shall  cheerfully  bear  the  re- 
proach of  having  descended  beloAv  the  dignity  of  his- 
tory, if  I  can  succeed  in  placing  before  the  English  of 
the  nineteenth  century  a  true  picture  of  the  life  of  their 
ancestors. 

The  events  which  I  propose  to  relate  form  only  a 
sino-le  act  of  a  ixreat  and  eventful  drama  extending 
through  ages,  and  must  be  very  imperfectly  understood 


4  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

unless  the  plot  of  the  preceding  acts  be  well  known. 
I  shall  therefore  introduce  my  narrative  by  a  slight 
sketch  of  the  history  of  our  country  from  tlie  earliest 
times.  I  shall  pass  very  rapidly  over  many  centuries  : 
but  I  shall  dwell  at  some  length  on  the  vicissitudes  of 
that  contest  which  the  administration  of  King  James 
the  Second  brono;ht  to  a  decisive  crisis.^ 

Nothing  in  the  early  existence  of  Britain  indicated 
Britain  un-  tlic  grcatuess  which  she  was  destined  to  at» 
mans.  tain.     Her  inhabitants,  when  first  they  be- 

came known  to  the  Tyrian  mariners,  were  little  supe- 
rior to  the  natives  of  the  Sandwich  Islands.  She  was 
subjugated  by  the  Roman  arms  ;  but  she  received  only 
a  faint  tincture  of  Roman  arts  and  letters.  Of  the 
western  provinces  which  obeyed  the  Ceesars  she  was 
the  last  that  was  conquered,  and  the  first  that  was 
flung  away.  No  magnificent  remains  of  Latian  porches 
and  aqueducts  are  to  be  found  in  Britain.  No  writer 
of  British  birth  is  reckoned  among  the  masters  of  La- 
tian poetry  and  eloquence.  It  is  not  probable  that  the 
islanders  were  at  any  time  generally  familiar  with  the 
tonfjue  of  their  Italian  rulers.  From  the  Atlantic  to 
the  vicinity  of  the  Rhine  the  Latin  has,  during  many 
centuries,  been  ^predominant.  It  drove  out  the  Celtic ; 
it  was  not  driven  out  by  the  Teutonic  ;  and  it  is  at  this 
day  the  basis  of  the  French,  Spanisli,  and  Portuguese 
languages.  In  our  island  the  Latin  appears  never  to 
have  superseded  the  old  Gaelic  speech,  and  could  not 
stand  its  ground  against  the  German. 

1  In  this,  and  in  the  next  chapter,  I  have  ven-  selJom  thoun;ht  it  neces- 
eaiy  to  cite  authorities:  for,  in  tliese  chapters,  I  iiave  not  detailed  events 
minutelj',  or  used  recondite  materials;  and  the  facts  which  I  mention  are  for 
tiie  most  part  sucli  tliat  a  person  tolerably  well  read  in  English  history,  if 
not  already  apprised  of  them,  will  at  least  know  where  to  look  for  evidence 
of  them.  In  the  subsequent  chapters  I  shall  carefull)'  indicate  the  sources 
of  my  information. 


Ch.  I.]  fiEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  6 

The  scanty  and  superficial  civilisation  wliich  tlie 
Britons  had  derived  from  their  southern  masters  was 
effaced  by  the  calamities  of  the  fifth  century.  In  tlie 
continental  kingdoms  into  vs^hich  the  Roman  empire 
was  then  dissolved,  the  conquerors  learned  much  from 
the  conquered  race.  In  Britain  the  conquered  race 
became  as  barbarous  as  the  conquerors. 

All  the  chiefs  who  founded  Teutonic  dynasties  in 
the  continental  provinces  of  the  Roman  em-  Britain  un- 
pire,  Alaric,  Theodoric,  Clovis,  Alboin,  were  ous. 
zealous  Christians.  Tlie  followers  of  Ida  and  Cerdic, 
on  the  other  hand,  brought  to  their  settlements  in  Brit- 
ain all  the  superstitions  of  the  Elbe.  While  the  Ger- 
man princes  who  reigned  at  Paris,  Toledo,  Aries,  and 
Ravenna  listened  with  reverence  to  the  instructions 
of  bishops,  adored  the  relics  of  martyrs,  and  took  part 
eagerly  in  disputes  touching  the  Nicene  theology,  the 
rulers  of  Wessex  and  Mercia  were  still  performing 
savage  rites  in  the  temples  of  Thor  and  Woden. 

The  continental  kino;doms  which  had  risen  on  the 
ruins  of  the  Western  Em})ire  kept  up  some  intercourse 
with  those  eastern  provinces  where  the  ancient  civili- 
sation, though  slowly  fading  away  under  the  inlWence 
of  misgovernment,  might  still  astonish  and  instruct  bar- 
barians, where  the  court  still  exhibited  the  splendour  of 
Diocletian  and  Constantino,  where  the  public  buildings 
were  still  adorned  with  the  sculptures  of  Polycletus 
and  the  paintings  of  Apelles,  and  where  laborious  })ed- 
ants,  themselves  destitute  of  taste,  sense,  and  spirit, 
could  still  read  and  interpret  the  masterpieces  of  Soph- 
ocles, of  Demosthenes,  and  of  Plato.  From  this  com- 
munion Britain  was  cut  oil".  Her  shores  were,  to  the 
polished  race  which  dwelt  by  the  Bosporus,  objects  of 
a  mysterious  horror,  such  as  that  with  which  the  lo- 


6  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  tCn.  L 

nians  of  the  age  of  Homer  had  resarded  the  Straits 
of  Scylla  and  the  city  of  the  Lfestrvgonian  cannibals. 
There  was  one  province  of  our  island  in  which,  as 
Procopius  had  been  told,  the  ground  was  covered  with 
serpents,  and  the  air  was  such  that  no  man  could  in- 
hale it  and  live.  To  this  desolate  region  the  spirits  of 
the  departed  were  ferried  over  from  the  land  of  tlie 
Franks  at  midnight.  A  strange  race  of  fishermen  per- 
formed the  ghastly  office.  The  speech  of  the  dead  was 
distinctly  heard  by  the  boatmen  :  their  weight  made 
the  keel  sink  deep  in  the  water ;  but  their  forms  wei'e 
invisible  to  mortal  eye.  Such  were  the  marvels  which 
an  able  historian,  the  contemporary  of  Belisarius,  of 
Simplicius,  and  of  Tribonian,  gravely  related  in  the 
rich  and  polite  Constantinople,  touching  the  country  in 
which  the  founder  of  Constantinople  had  assumed  the 
imperial  purple.  Concerning  all  the  other  provinces 
of  the  Western  Empire  we  have  continuous  informa- 
tion. It  is  only  in  Britain  that  an  age  of  fable  com- 
pletely separates  two  ages  of  truth.  Odoacer  and  To- 
tila,  Euric  and  Thrasimund,  Clovis,  Fredegunda,  and 
Brunechild,  are  historical  men  and  women.  But  Hen- 
gist  and  Horsa,  Vortigern  and  Rowena,  Arthur  and 
Mordred  are  mythical  persons,  whose  very  existence 
may  be  questioned,  and  whose  adventures  must  be 
classed  with  those  of  Hercules  and  Romulus. 

At  length  the  darkness  begins  to  break  ;    and  the 
Conversion  of  couutrv  which  had  been  lost  to  view  as  Brit- 

the  Saxons  to      .  _,        ,         .  _^. 

Christianity,  aui  rcappears  as  England,  ilie  conversion 
of  the  Saxon  colonists  to  Christianity  was  the  first  of  a 
long  series  of  salutary  revolutions.  It  is  true  that  the 
Church  had  been  deeply  corrupted  both  by  that  super 
itition  and  by  that  philosophy  against  which  she  haa 
tong  contended,  and  over  which  she  had  at  last  tri- 


fjH.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  T 

nm})lied.  She  had  given  a  too  easy  admission  to  doc- 
trines borrowed  from  the  ancient  schools,  and  to  rites 
borrowed  from  the  ancient  tem})Ies.  Roman  policy 
and  Gothic  ignorance,  Grecian  ingenuity  and  Synan 
asceticism,  had  contributed  to  deprave  her.  Yet  she 
retained  enough  of  the  sublime  theology  and  benevo- 
lent morality  of  her  earlier  days  to  elevate  many  intel- 
lects, and  to  purify  many  hearts.  Some  things  also 
which  at  a  later  period  were  justly  regarded  as  among 
her  chief  blemishes  were,  in  the  seventh  century,  and 
long  afterwards,  among  her  chief  merits.  That  the 
sacerdotal  order  should  encroach  on  the  functions  of 
the  civil  magistrate  would,  in  our  time,  be  a  great  evil. 
But  that  which  hi  an  age  of  good  government  is  an 
evil  may,  in  an  age  of  grossly  bad  government,  be  a 
blessing.  It  is  better  that  mankind  should  be  governed 
by  wise  laws  well  administered,  and  by  an  enlightened 
])ublic  opiiu'on,  than  by  priestcraft :  but  it  is  better  that 
men  should  be  governed  by  priestcraft  tlian  by  brute 
violence,  by  such  a  prelate  as  Dunstnn  than  by  such  a 
warrior  as  Penda.  A  society  sunk  in  ignorance,  and 
ruled  by  mere  physical  force,  has  great  reason  to  re- 
joice when  a  class,  of  which  the  influence  is  intellect- 
ual and  moral,  rises  to  ascendency.  Such  a  class  will 
doubtless  abuse  its  power  :  but  mental  power,  even 
when  abused,  is  still  a  nobler  and  better  power  than 
that  which  consists  merely  in  corporeal  strength.  We 
read  in  our  Saxon  chronicles  of  tyrants,  who,  when  at 
tne  height  of  greatness,  were  smitten  with  remorse, 
who  abhorred  the  ]ileasures  and  dignities  which  they 
had  purchased  by  guilt,  who  abdicated  their  crowns, 
and  who  sought  to  atone  for  their  offences  by  cruel 
penances  and  incessant  prayers.  These  stories  have 
drawn  forth  bitter  expressions  of  contempt  from  some 


8  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn    I. 

writers  wlio,  wliile  they  boasted  of  liberality,  were  in 
truth  as  narrow-minded  as  any  monk  of  the  dark  ages, 
and  whose  habit  was  to  apply  to  all  events  in  the  history 
of  the  world  the  standard  received  in  the  Parisian  society 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Yet  surely  a  system  which, 
however  deformed  by  superstition,  introduced  strong 
moral  restraints  into  communities  previously  governed 
only  by  vigour  of  muscle  and  by  audacity  of  spirit,  a 
system  which  taught  the  tiercest  and  mightiest  ruler 
that  he  was,  like  his  meanest  bondman,  a  responsible 
being,  might  have  seemed  to  deserve  a  more  respectful 
mention  from  philosophers  and  philanthropists. 

The  same  observations  will  apply  to  the  contempt 
with  which,  in  the  last  century,  it  was  fashionable  to 
speak  of  the  pilgrimages,  the  sanctuaries,  the  crusades, 
and  the  monastic  institutions  of  the  middle  ages.  In 
times  when  men  were  scarcely  ever  induced  to  travel 
by  liberal  curiosity,  or  by  the  pursuit  of  gain,  it  was 
better  that  the  rude  inhabitant  of  the  North  should 
visit  Italy  and  the  East  as  a  pilgrim,  than  that  he 
should  never  see  anything  but  those  squalid  cabins  and 
uncleared  woods  amidst  Avhich  he  was  born.  In  times 
when  life  and  when  female  honour  were  exposed  to 
daily  risk  from  tyrants  and  marauders,  it  was  better 
that  the  precinct  of  a  shrine  should  be  regarded  with 
an  irrational  awe,  than  that  there  should  be  no  refuge 
inaccessible  to  cruelty  and  licentiousness.  In  times 
w^lien  statesmen  were  incapable  of  forming  extensive 
political  combinations,  it  was  better  that  the  Christian 
nations  should  be  roused  and  united  for  the  recovery 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  than  that  they  should,  one  hy 
one,  be  overwhelmed  by  the  Mahometan  power.  What- 
ever reproach  may,  at  a  later  period,  have  been  justly 
thrown  on  the  indolence  and  luxury  of  religious  orders, 


Ch,  I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  9 

it  was  surely  good  that,  in  an  age  of  ignorance  and 
violence,  tliere  should  be  quiet  cloisters  and  gardens. 
in  which  the  aits  of  peace  coidd  be  safely  cultivated, 
in  which  gentle  and  contemplative  natures  could  tind 
an  asylum,  in  Avhich  one  brother  could  employ  himself 
in  transcribing  the  jEneid  of  Virgil,  and  another  in 
meditating  the  Analytics  of  Aristotle,  in  which  he  who 
had  a  genius  for  art  might  illuminate  a  martyrology  or 
carve  a  crucifix,  and  in  which  he  who  had  a  turn  for 
natural  philosophy  might  make  experiments  on  the 
properties  of  plants  and  minerals.  Had  not  such  re- 
treats been  scattered  here  and  there,  amono;  the  huts 
of  a  miserable  peasantiy,  and  the  castles  of  a  ferocious 
aristocrac}^  Euro])ean  society  would  have  consisted 
merely  of  beasts  of  burden  and  beasts  of  i)rey.  Tlie 
Church  has  many  times  been  compared  by  divines  to 
the  ark  of  which  we  read  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  :  but 
never  was  the  resemblance  more  perfect  than  dunng 
that  evil  time  when  she  alone  rode,  amidst  darkness 
and  tempest,  on  the  deluge  beneath  which  all  the  great 
works  of  ancient  power  and  wisdom  lay  entombed,  bear- 
ing within  her  that  feeble  germ  from  which  a  second 
and  more  glorious  civilisation  Avas  to  spring. 

Even  the  s])iritual  supremacy  arrogated  by  the  Pope 
was,  in  the  dark  ages,  ])roductive  of  far  more  good  than 
evil.  Its  effect  was  to  unite  the  nations  of  Western 
Europe  in  one  great  commonwealth.  What  the  Olym- 
pian chariot  course  and  the  Pythian  oracle  were  to  all 
the  Greek  cities,  from  Trcbizond  to  Marseilles,  Rome 
and  her  Bishop  were  to  all  Christians  of  the  Latin  com- 
munion, from  Calabria  to  the  Hebrides.  Thus  grew 
up  sentiments  of  enlarged  benevolence.  Races  sepa- 
rated from  each  other  hy  seas  and  mountains  acknowl- 
edged a  fraternal  tie  and  a  common  code  of  jiublic  law. 


10  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I- 

Even  in  war,  the  cruelty  of  the  conqueror  was  not  sel- 
dom mitigated  by  the  recollection  that  he  and  his  van- 
quished enemies  were  all  members  of  one  great  feder- 
ation. 

Into  this  federation  our  Saxon  ancestors  were  now 
admitted.  A  regular  communication  was  opened  be- 
tween our  shores  and  that  part  of  Europe  in  which  the 
traces  of  ancient  power  and  policy  were  yet  discerni- 
ble. Many  noble  monuments  which  have  since  been 
destroyed  or  defaced  still  retained  their  pristine  magnif- 
icence ;  and  travellers,  to  whom  Livy  and  Sallust  were 
unintelligible,  might  gain  from  the  Roman  aqueducts 
and  temples  some  faint  notion  of  Roman  history.  The 
dome  of  Agrippa,  still  glittering  with  bronze,  the  mau- 
soleum of  Adrian,  not  yet  deprived  of  its  columns  and 
statues,  the  Flavian  amphitheatre,  not  yet  degraded 
into  a  quarry,  told  to  the  rude  English  pilgrims  some 
part  of  the  story  of  that  great  civilised  world  which 
had  passed  away.  The  islanders  returned,  with  awe 
deeply  impressed  on  their  half  opened  minds,  and  told 
the  wondering  inhabitants  of  the  hovels  of  London  and 
York  that,  near  the  grave  of  Saint  Peter,  a  mighty 
race,  now  extinct,  had  piled  up  buildings  which  would 
never  be  dissolved  till  the  judgment  day.  Learning 
followed  in  the  train  of  Christianity.  The  poetry  and 
eloquence  of  the  Augustan  age  was  assiduously  studied 
in  Mercian  and  Northumbrian  monasteries.  The  names 
of  Bede  and  Alcuin  were  justly  celebrated  throughout 
Europe.  Such  was  the  state  of  our  country  when,  in 
the  ninth  century,  began  the  last  great  migration  of 
the  northern  barbarians. 

During  many  years  Denmark  and  Scandinavia  con- 
Danish  inva-  tiuucd  to  pour  forth  innumerable  pirates,  dis- 
Bioiis  tinguished  by  strength,  by  valour,  by  merci- 


Cii.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  11 

less  ferocity,  and  by  liatred  of  tlie  Christian  naine. 
No  country  suffered  so  much  from  these  invaders  as 
England.  Her  coast  lay  near  to  tlie  ports  whence 
tliey  sailed  ;  nor  was  any  shire  so  far  distant  from  the 
sea  as  to  be  secure  from  attack.  The  same  atrocities 
which  had  attended  the  victory  of  the  Saxon  over  the 
Celt  were  now,  after  the  lapse  of  ages,  suffered  by  the 
Saxon  at  the  hand  of  the  Dane.  Civilisation,  just  as 
it  began  to  rise,  was  met  l)y  this  blow,  and  sank  down 
once  more.  Laro;e  colonies  of  adventurers  from  the 
Baltic  established  themselves  on  the  eastern  shores 
of  our  island,  spread  gradually  westward,  and,  suj)- 
ported  by  constant  reinforcements  from  beyond  the 
sea,  aspired  to  the  dominion  of  the  whole  realm.  The 
struiTiile  between  the  two  fierce  Teutonic  breeds  lasted 
through  six  generations.  Each  was  alternately  para- 
mount. Cruel  massacres  followed  by  cruel  retribution, 
provinces  wasted,  convents  plundered,  and  cities  rased 
to  the  ground,  make  up  the  greater  part  of  the  history 
of  those  evil  days.  At  length  the  North  ceased  to  send 
forth  a  constant  stream  of  fresh  de{)redators,  and  from 
that  time  the  mutual  aversion  of  the  races  beoan  to 
subside.  Intermarriage  became  frequent.  The  Danes 
learned  the  religion  of  the  Saxons  ;  and  thus  one  cause 
of  deadly  animosity  was  removed.  The  Danish  and 
Saxon  tongues,  l)oth  dialects  of  one  widespread  lan- 
guage, were  blended  together.  But  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  nations  was  by  no  means  effaced,  when 
an  event  took  place  which  prostrated  both,  in  common 
slavery  and  degradation,  at  the  feet  of  a  third  people. 

The  Normans  were  then  the  foremost  race  of  Chris- 
ttndom.     Their  valour  and  ferocity  had  made    ji^g  jjor- 
them   conspicuous   among  the    rovers  whom   '"'"*'• 
Scandinavia  had  sent  forth  to  ravage  Western  Europe, 


12  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  1. 

Their  sails  were  loner  the  terror  of  botli  coasts  of  tjie 
channel.  Their  arms  were  repeatedly  carried  far  into 
the  heart  of  the  Carlovingian  empire,  and  were  victo- 
rious under  the  walls  of  Maestricht  and  Paris.  At 
length  one  of  the  feeble  heirs  of  Charlemasne  ceded 
to  the  strangers  a  fertile  province,  watered  by  a  noble 
river,  and  contiguous  to  the  sea  which  was  their  favour- 
ite element.  In  that  province  they  founded  a  mighty 
state,  which  gradually  extended  its  influence  over  the 
neighbouring  principalities  of  Britanny  and  Maine. 
Without  laying  aside  that  dauntless  valour  which  had 
been  the  terror  of  every  land  from  the  Elbe  to  the 
Pyrenees,  the  Normans  rapidly  acquired  all,  and  more 
than  all,  the  knowledge  and  refinement  which  they 
found  in  the  country  where  they  settled.  Their  cour- 
age secured  their  territory  against  foreign  invasion. 
They  established  internal  order,  such  as  had  long  been 
unknown  in  the  Frank  empire.  They  embraced  Chris- 
tianity, and  with  Christianity  they  learned  a  great  part 
of  what  the  clergy  had  to  teach.  They  abandoned 
their  native  speech,  and  adopted  the  French  tongue, 
in  which  the  Latin  was  the  predominant  element. 
They  speedily  raised  their  new  language  to  a  dignity 
and  importance  which  it  had  never  before  possessed. 
They  found  it  a  barbarous  jargon  ;  they  fixed  it  in 
Avriting  ;  and  they  employed  it  in  legislation,  in  poetry, 
and  in  romance.  They  renounced  that  brutal  intem- 
perance to  which  all  the  other  branches  of  the  great 
German  family  w^ere  too  much  inclined.  The  polite 
luxury  01  the  Norman  presented  a  striking  contrast  to 
the  coarse  voracity  and  drunkenness  of  his  Saxon  and 
Danish  neighbours.  He  loved  to  display  his  magnifi- 
cence, not  in  huge  piles  of  food  and  hogsheads  of  strong 
drink,  but  in  large  and  stately  edifices,  rich  armour,  gal- 


Cii.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  13 

lant  horses,  choice  falcons,  well-ordered  tournaments, 
banquets    delicate    rather    than    abundant,    and  wines 
remarkable  rather  for  their  exquisite  flavour  than  for 
their  intoxicating  power.     That  chivalrous  spirit,  which 
has  exercised  so  powerful  an  influence  on  the  politics, 
morals,  and  manners  of  all  the  European  nations,  was 
found   in   the   highest  exaltation  among   the    Norman 
nobles.      Those    nobles    were    distinguished    by    their 
graceful  bearing  and  insinuating  address.     They  were 
distinguished  also  by  their  skill  in  negotiation,  and  by 
a  natural  eloquence  which  they  assiduously  cultivated. 
It  was  the  boast  of  one  of  theu*  historians  that  the  Nor- 
man   gentlemen   were   orators  from  the   cradle.     But 
their  chief  fame  was  derived  from  their  military  exploits. 
Every  country,  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  to  the  Dead 
Sea,   witnessed  the   prodigies   of  their  discipline    and 
valour.     One  Norman  knight,  at  the  head  of  a  handful 
of  warriors,  scattered  the  Celts  of  Connaught.    Another 
founded  the  monarchy  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  and  saw  the 
emperors  both  of  the  East  and  of  the  West  fly  before  his 
arms.     A  third,  the  Ulysses  of  the  first  crusade,  was 
invested  by  his  fellow  soldiers  with  the  sovereignty  of 
Antioch  ;  and  a  fourth,  the  Tancred  whose  name  lives 
in  the  great  poem  of  Tasso,  was   celebrated  through 
Christendom  as  the  bravest  and  most  generous  of  the 
deliverers  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

The  vicinity  of  so  remarkable  a  people  earl\'  began 
to  produce  an  effect  on  the  public  mind  of  England. 
Before  the  Conquest,  English  princes  received  their 
education  in  Normandy.  English  sees  and  English 
estates  were  bestowed  on  Normans.  The  French  of 
Normandy  was  familiarly  sj)oken  in  the  palace  of  West- 
minster. The  court  of  Rouen  seems  to  have  been  to 
the  court  of  Edward  the  Confessor  what  the  court  of 


14  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

V^ersailles  lono;  afterwards  was  to  the  court  of  Charles 
the  Second. 

The  battle  of  Hastings,  and  the  events  which  fo!- 
The  Norman  lowcd  it,  not  Only  placed  a  Duke  of  Nor- 
conquest.  mandy  on  the  English  throne,  but  gave  up 
the  whole  population  of  England  to  the  tyranny  of 
the  Norman  race.  The  subjugation  of  a  nation  by  a 
nation  has  seldom,  even  in  Asia,  been  more  complete. 
The  country  was  poi'tioned  out  among  the  captains 
of  the  invaders.  Strong  military  institutions,  closely 
connected  Avith  the  institution  of  property,  enabled  the 
foreigii  conquerors  to  oppress  the  children  of  the  soil. 
A  cruel  penal  code,  cruelly  enforced,  guarded  the  priv- 
ileges, and  even  the  sports,  of  the  alien  tyrants.  Yet 
the  subject  race,  though  beaten  down  and  trodden  un= 
der  foot,  still  made  its  sting  felt.  Some  bold  men,  the 
favounte  heroes  of  our  oldest  ballads,  betook  themselves 
to  the  woods,  and  there,  in  defiance  of  curfew  laws  and 
forest  laws,  waged  a  predatory  war  against  their  oppress- 
ors. Assassination  was  an  event  of  daily  occurrence. 
Many  Normans  suddenly  disappeared  leaving  no  trace. 
The  corpses  of  many  were  found  bearing  the  marks  of 
violence.  Death  by  torture  was  denounced  against  the 
murderers,  and  strict  search  was  made  for  them,  but 
generally  in  vain  ;  for  the  whole  nation  was  in  a  con- 
spiracy to  screen  them.  It  was  at  length  thought  neces- 
sary to  lay  a  heavy  fine  on  every  Hundred  in  which  a 
person  of  French  extraction  should  be  found  slain  ;  and 
this  regulation  was  followed  up  by  another  regulation, 
providing  that  every  person  who  was  found  slain  should 
be  supposed  to  be  a  Frenchman,  unless  he  were  proved 
to  be  a  Saxon. 

During  the  century  and  a  half  which  followed  the 
Conquest,  there  is,  to  speak  strictly,  no  English  history. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  15 

The  French  Kiags  of  England  rose,  Indeed,  to  an  emi- 
nence wliich  was  the  wonder  and  dread  of  all  neighbour- 
ing nations.  They  conquered  Ireland.  They  recei-s'ed 
the  homage  of  Scotland.  B}^  their  valour,  by  their  pol- 
icy, by  their  fortunate  matrimonial  alliances,  they  be- 
came far  more  powerful  on  the  Continent  than  their 
liege  lords  the  Kings  of  France.  Asia,  as  well  as  En- 
rope,  was  dazzled  by  the  power  and  glory  of  our  tyrants. 
Arabian  chroniclers  recorded  with  unwilling  admiration 
the  fall  of  Acre,  the  defence  of  Joppa,  and  the  victori- 
ous march  to  x\scalon  ;  and  Arabian  mothers  long  awed 
their  infants  to  silence  with  the  name  of  the  lion  hearted 
Plantan-enet.  At  one  time  it  seemed  that  the  line  of 
Hugh  Capet  was  about  to  end  as  the  Merovingian  and 
Carlovingian  lines  had  ended,  and  that  a  single  great 
monarchy  would  spread  from  the  Orkneys  to  the  Pyre- 
nees. So  stronjr  an  association  is  established  in  most 
minds  between  the  greatness  of  a  sovereign  and  the 
greatness  of  the  nation  which  he  rules,  that  almost 
every  historian  of  England  has  expatiated  with  a  senti- 
ment of  exultation  on  the  power  and  splendour  of  her 
foreio-n  masters,  and  has  lamented  the  decay  of  tliat 
power  and  splendour  as  a  calamity  to  our  country. 
This  is,  in  truth,  as  absurd  as  it  would  be  in  a  Haytian 
negro  of  our  time  to  dwell  with  national  pride  on  the 
greatness  of  T^ewis  the  Fourteenth,  and  to  speak  of 
Blenheim  and  Ramilieswith  patriotic  regret  and  shame. 
The  Conqueror  and  his  descendants  to  the  fourth  gen- 
eration were  not  Englishmen  :  most  of  them  were  born 
in  France  :  they  si)ent  the  greater  part  of  their  lives 
in  France  :  their  ordinary  speech  was  French  :  almost 
eveiy  high  office  in  their  gift  was  filled  by  a  French- 
man :  every  acquisition  which  they  made  on  the  Con- 
tinent estranged  them  more  and  more  from  the  popu- 


16  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  1. 

iation  ot  our  island.  One  of  the  ablest  amoncr  tliem 
indeed  attempted  to  win  the  hearts  of  his  English  sub- 
jects by  espousmg  an  English  princess.  But,  by  many 
of  his  barons,  this  marriage  was  reo;arded  as  a  mannage 
between  a  white  jjlanter  and  a  quadroon  girl  would  now 
be  regarded  in  Virginia.  In  history  he  is  known  by 
the  honourable  surname  of  Beauclerc ;  but,  in  his  own 
time,  his  own  countrymen  called  him  by  a  Saxon  nick- 
name, in  contemptuous  allusion  to  his  Saxon  connection. 

Had  the  Plantagenets,  as  at  one  time  seemed  likely, 
succeeded  in  uniting  all  France  under  their  government, 
it  is  probable  that  England  would  never  have  had  an 
independent  existence.  Her  princes,  her  lords,  her 
prelates,  would  have  been  men  differing  in  race  and  lan- 
guage from  the  artisans  and  the  tillers  of  the  earth.  The 
revenues  of  her  great  proprietors  would  have  been  spent 
in  festivities  and  diversions  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine. 
The  noble  language  of  Milton  and  Bui-ke  would  have 
remained  a  rustic  dialect,  without  a  literature,  a  fixed 
grammar,  or  a  fixed  orthogi-aphy,  and  would  have  been 
contemptuously  abandoned  to  the  use  of  boors.  No  man 
of  English  extraction  would  have  risen  to  eminence,  ex- 
cept by  becoming  in  speech  and  habits  a  Frenchman. 

England  owes  her  escape  from  such  calamities  to  an 
Separation  of  cvcut    wliicli    licr    historiaus    have  fjenerallv 

England  and  it  tt  • 

Normandy,  represented  as  disastrous.  Her  interest  was 
so  directly  opposed  to  the  interest  of  her  rulers  that  .she 
had  no  hope  but  in  their  errors  and  misfortunes.  The 
talents  and  even  the  virtues  of  her  six  first  French 
Kinrjs  were  a  curse  to  her.  The  follies  and  vices  of 
the  seventh  were  her  salvation.  Had  John  inherited 
the  great  qualities  of  his  father,  of  Henry  Beauclerc, 
or  of  the  Conqueror,  nay,  had  he  even  possessed  the 
martial  courage  of  Stephen  or  of  Richard,  and  had  the 


Ch    1.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  17 

King  of  France  at  the  same  time  been  as  incapable  as 
all  the  other  successors  of  Hugh  Capet  had  been,  the 
House  of  Plantagenet  must  have  risen  to  unrivalled 
ascendency  in  Europe.  But,  just  at  this  conjuncture, 
France,  for  the  first  time  since  the  death  of  Charle- 
magne, was  governed  by  a  prince  of  great  firmness  and 
ability  On  the  other  hand  England  which,  since  the 
battle  of  Hastings,  had  been  ruled  generally  by  wise 
statesmen,  always  by  brave  soldiei-s,  fell  under  the 
dominion  of  a  trifler  and  a  coward.  From  that  mo- 
ment her  prospects  brightened.  John  was  driven  from 
Normandy.  The  Norman  nobles  were  compelled  to 
make  their  election  between  the  island  and  the  conti- 
nent. Shut  up  by  the  sea  with  the  peoj)le  whom  they 
had  hitherto  oppressed  and  despised,  they  gradually 
came  to  regard  England  as  their  comitry,  and  the 
English  as  their  couutrvmen.  The  two  races  so  long 
hostile,  soon  found  that  they  had  common  interests  and 
common  enemies.  Both  were  alike  aggrieved  by  the 
tyranny  of  a  bad  king.  Both  were  alike  indignant  at 
the  favour  shown  by  the  court  to  the  natives  of  Foitou 
and  Aquitaine.  Tiie  great  grandsons  of  those  who  had 
fought  under  William  and  the  great  grandsons  of  those 
who  had  fonn;ht  under  Harold  began  to  draw  near  to 
each  other  in  friendship  ;  and  the  first  pledge  of  their 
reconciliation  was  the  Great  Charter,  won  by  their 
united  exertions,  and  framed  for  their  common  benefit. 
Here  commences  the  history  of  the  English  nation. 
The  history  of  the  preceding  events  is  the  Amaigama- 
history  of  wrongs  inflicted  and  sustained  by  ^'"" "' ■""''"•" 
various  tribes,  which  indeed  all  dwelt  on  English  ground, 
but  which  regarded  each  other  with  aversion  such  as 
has  scarcely  ever  existed  between  communities  sei)a- 
rated  by  physical  barriers.  For  even  the  mutual  ani- 
voi..  ,  2 


1»  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  {Ch.  L 

mosity  of  countries  at  war  with  each  otlier  is  lanoniid 
when  compared  witli  tlie  animosity  of  nations  which, 
morally  separated,  are  yet  locally  intermingled.  In  no 
country  has  the  enmity  of  race  been  carried  farther  than 
in  England.  In  no  countiy  has  that  enmity  been  more 
completely  effaced.  The  stages  of  the  process  by  which 
the  hostile  elements  were  melted  down  into  one  homo- 
geneous mass  are  not  accurately  known  to  us.  B.it  it 
is  certain  that,  when  John  became  king,  the  distinction 
between  Saxons  and  Normans  was  strongly  marked, 
and  that  before  the  end  of  the  reio-n  of  his  m'andson  it 
had  almost  disappeared.  In  the  time  of  Richard  the 
First,  the  ordinary  imprecation  of  a  Norman  gentleman 
was  "  May  I  become  an  Englishman  !  "  His  ordinary 
form  of  indignant  denial  was  "  Do  you  take  me  for  an 
Eno-lishman  ?  "  The  descendant  of  such  a  oentleman 
a  hundred  years  later  was  proud  of  the  English  name. 

The  sources  of  the  noblest  rivers  wdiich  spread  fer- 
tility over  continents,  and  bear  richly  laden  fleets  to 
the  sea,  are  to  be  sought  in  wild  and  barren  mountain 
tracts,  incorrectly  laid  down  in  maps,  and  rarely  ex- 
plored by  travellers.  To  such  a  tract  the  history  of 
our  country  dui'ing  the  thirteenth  century  may  not 
unaptly  be  compared.  Sterile  and  obscure  as  is  that 
portion  of  our  annals,  it  is  there  that  we  must  seek 
for  the  origin  of  our  freedom,  our  prosperity,  and 
our  glory.  Then  it  was  that  the  great  English  peo- 
ple was  formed,  that  the  national  character  began  to 
exhibit  those  peculiarities  which  it  has  ever  since  re- 
tained, and  that  our  fathers  became  emphatically  isl- 
anders, islanders  not  merely  in  geographical  position, 
but  in  their  politics,  their  feelings,  and  their  manners. 
Then  first  appeared  with  distinctness  that  constitution 
which  has  ever  since,  through  all  changes,  preserved 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   EESTORATION.  19 

its  identity  ;  that  constitution  of  wliich  all  the  other 
fi-ee  constitutions  in  the  world  ai'e  copies,  and  which, 
in  spite  of  some  defects,  deserves  to  be  regarded  as  the 
best  under  which  any  great  society  has  ever  yet  existed 
during  many  ages.  Then  it  was  that  tlie  House  of 
Commons,  the  archetype  of  all  the  representative  as- 
semblies which  now  meet,  either  in  the  old  or  in  the 
new  world,  held  its  first  sittings.  Then  it  was  that  the 
common  law  rose  to  the  dignity  of  a  science,  and  rap- 
idly became  a  not  unworthy  rival  of  the  imperial  juris- 
prudence. Then  it  was  that  the  courage  of  those 
sailors  who  manned  the  rude  barks  of  the  Cinque  Ports 
fii'st  made  the  flao-  of  England  terrible  on  the  seas. 
Then  it  was  that  the  most  ancient  colleges  which  still 
exist  at  both  the  great  national  seats  of  learnino;  M^ere 
founded.  Then  was  formed  that  lanmiao-e,  less  musi- 
cal  indeed  than  the  languages  of  the  south,  but  in  force, 
in  richness,  in  aptitude  for  all  the  highest  purposes  of 
the  poet,  the  ]iliilosopher,  and  the  orator,  inferior  to 
the  tongue  of  Greece  alone.  Then  too  appeared  the 
first  faint  dawn  of  that  noble  literature,  the  most  splen- 
did and  the  most  durable  of  the  many  glories  of  Eng- 
land. 

Early  in  the  fourteenth  centurv  the  amalgamation 
of  the  races  was  all  but  complete ;  and  it  was  soon 
made  manifest,  by  signs  not  to  be  mistaken,  that  a 
people  inferior  to  none  existing  in  the  world  had  been 
formed  by  the  mixture  of  three  branches  of  the  great 
Teutonic  family  with  each  other,  and  with  the  aboriginal 
Britons.  There  was,  indeed,  scarcely  any  thing  in  com- 
mon between  the  England  to  which  John  had  been 
chased  by  Pliilip  Augustus,  and  the  England  from 
which  the  armies  of  Edward  the  Thii-d  went  forth  to 
conquer  France. 


20  HISTORY  OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

A  period  of  more  than  a  hundred  years  followed, 
English  con-   during  whicli  the  chief  object  of  the  Encrlish 

quests  on  the  i  v    i        i  r-  c 

Continent,  was  to  establish,  by  force  of  arms,  a  great 
empire  on  the  Continent.  The  claim  of  Edward 
to  the  inheritance  occupied  by  the  House  of  Valois 
was  a  claim  in  which  it  might  seem  that  his  sub- 
jects were  little  interested.  But  the  passion  for  con- 
quest spread  fast  fi'om  the  prince  to  the  people.  The 
war  differed  widely  from  the  wars  which  the  Plantage- 
nets  of  the  twelfth  century  had  waged  against  the  de- 
scendants of  Hugh  Capet.  For  the  success  of  Henry 
the  Second,  or  of  Richard  the  First,  would  have  made 
England  a  province  of  France.  The  effect  of  the  suc- 
cesses of  Edward  the  Third  and  of  Henry  the  Fifth 
was  to  make  France,  for  a  time,  a  province  of  England. 
The  disdain  with  which,  in  the  twelfth  century,  the 
conquerors  from  the  Continent  had  regarded  the  isl- 
anders, was  now  retorted  by  the  islanders  on  the 
people  of  the  Continent.  Every  yeoman  from  Kent 
to  Northumberland  valued  himself  as  one  of  a  race 
born  for  victory  and  dominion,  and  looked  down  with 
scorn  on  the  nation  before  which  his  ancestors  had  trem- 
bled. Even  those  knights  of  Gascony  and  Guienne 
who  had  foxight  gallantly  under  the  Black  Prince  were 
regarded  by  the  English  as  men  of  an  inferior  breed, 
and  were  contemptuously  excluded  from  honourable  and 
lucrative  commands.  In  no  long  time  our  ancestors 
altogether  lost  sight  of  the  oi'iginal  ground  of  quarrel. 
They  began  to  consider  the  crown  of  France  as  a  mere 
appendage  to  the  crown  of  England ;  and  when,  in 
violation  of  the  ordinary  law  of  succession,  they  trans- 
ferred the  crown  of  England  to  the  House  of  Lancas- 
ter, they  seem  to  have  thought  that  the  right  of  Rich- 
ard the  Second  to  the  crown  of  France  passed,  as  of 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  21 

course,  to  tliat  house.  The  zeal  and  vigour  which  they 
dis])Iayed  present  a  remarkable  contrast  to  the  torpor 
of  the  French,  who  Avere  far  more  deeply  interested  in 
the  event  of  the  struggle.  The  most  splendid  victories 
recorded  in  the  history  of  the  middle  ages  were  gained 
at  this  time,  against  great  odds,  by  the  English  armies. 
Victories  indeed  they  were  of  which  a  nation  may  justly 
be  proud ;  for  they  are  to  be  attributed  to  the  moral 
superiority  of  the  victors,  a  superiority  which  was  most 
strikino;  in  the  lowest  ranks.  The  knights  of  Eng- 
land  found  worthy  rivals  in  the  knights  of  France. 
Chandos  encountered  an  equal  foe  in  Du  Guesclin. 
But  France  had  no  intiuitry  that  dared  to  face  the 
Enolish  bows  and  bills.  A  French  Kino;  was  broujiht 
prisoner  to  London.  An  Englisli  King  was  crowned 
at  Paris.  The  banner  of  Saint  George  was  carried 
far  beyond  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Alps.  On  the  south 
of  the  Ebro  the  English  won  a  great  battle,  Avhich  for 
a  time  decided  the  fate  of  Leon  and  Castile  ;  and  the 
English  Companies  obtained  a  terrible  preeminence 
among  the  bands  of  warriors  who  let  out  their  weapons 
for  hire  to  the  princes  and  commonwealths  of  Italy. 

Nor  were  the  arts  of  peace  neglected  by  our  fathers 
during  that  stirring  period.  While  Finance  was  wasted 
by  war,  till  she  at  length  found  in  her  own  desolation 
a  miserable  defence  against  invaders,  the  Eno-lish  ci'^th- 
ered  in  their  harvests,  adorned  their  cities,  pleaded, 
traded,  and  studied  in  security.  INfany  of  our  noblest 
architectural  monuments  beh^ng  to  that  Age.  Then  rose 
the  fair  chapels  of  New  College  and  of  Saint  George, 
the  nave  of  Winchester  and  the  choir  of  York,  the 
spire  of  Salisbury  and  the  majestic  towers  of  liincoln. 
A  copious  and  forcible  language,  formed  by  an  infusion 
of  French  into  German,  was  now  the  connnon  property 


22  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  |Ch.  I. 

of  the  aristocracy  and  of  the  people.  Nor  was  it  long 
before  genius  began  to  apply  that  admirable  machine 
to  worthy  purposes.  While  English  warriors,  leav- 
ing behind  them  the  devastated  provinces  of  France, 
entered  Valladolid  in  triumph,  and  vspread  terror  to 
the  gates  of  Florence,  English  poets  depicted  in  vi\  iil 
tints  all  the  wide  variety  of  human  manners  and  for- 
tunes, and  English  thinkers  aspired  to  know,  or  dared 
to  doubt,  where  bigots  had  been  content  to  wonder  and 
to  believe.  The  same  age  which  produced  the  Black 
Prince  and  Derby,  Chandos  and  Hawkwood,  produced 
also  Geoffrey  Chaucer  and  John  Wycliffe. 

In  so  splendid  and  imperial  a  manner  did  the  Eng- 
lish people,  properly  so  called,  first  take  place  among 
the  nations  of  the  world.  Yet  while  we  contemplate 
with  pleasure  the  high  and  commanding  qualities  wdiich 
our  forefathers  displayed,  we  cannot  but  admit  that  the 
end  which  they  pursued  was  an  end  condemned  both 
by  humanity  and  by  enlightened  policy,  and  that  the 
reverses  wnich  compelled  them,  after  a  long  and  bloody 
struggle,  to  relinquish  the  hope  of  establishing  a  great 
continental  empire,  were  really  blessings  in  the  guise 
of  disasters.  The  spirit  of  the  French  was  at  last 
aroused :  they  began  to  oppose  a  vigorous  national 
resistance  to  the  foreign  conquerors  ;  and  from  that 
time  the  skill  of  the  English  captains  and  the  courage 
of  the  English  soldiers  were,  happily  for  mankind,  ex- 
erted in  vain.  After  many  desperate  struggles,  and 
with  many  bitter  regrets,  our  ancestors  gave  up  the 
contest.  Since  that  ao;e  no  British  government  has 
ever  seriously  and  steadily  pursued  the  design  of  mak- 
ing great  conquests  on  the  Continent.  The  people, 
indeed,  continued  to  cherish  with  pride  the  recollection 
of  Cressy,  of  Poitiers,  and  of  Agincourt.     Even  after 


'^H.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  Zd 

the  lapse  of  many  years  it  was  easy  to  fire  their  blood 
and  to  draw  forth  their  subsidies  by  promising  them 
an  expedition  for  the  conquest  of  France.  But  happily 
the  energies  of  our  country  have  been  directed  to  bet- 
ter objects ;  and  she  now  occupies  in  the  history  of 
mankind  a  place  far  more  glorious  than  if  she  had,  as 
at  one  time  seemed  not  improbable,  acquired  by  the 
sword  an  ascendency  similar  to  that  which  formerly 
behmged  to  the  Roman  republic. 

Cooped  up  once  more  within  the  limits  of  the  island, 
the   warlike  people   employed  in   civil  strife   y^^^^  ^f  t,,g 
those   arms   which   had    been  the  terror  of   ^''*^^- 
Evirope.     The  means  of  ))rofuse  expenditure  had  long 
been  drawn  by  the  English  barons  from  the  oppressed 
provinces  of  France.     That  source  of  supply  was  gone  ; 
but  the  ostentatious  and  luxurious  habits  which  pros- 
perity had  engendered  still  remained  ;  and  the  great 
lords,  unable  to  gratify  their  tastes  by  plundering  the 
French,  were  eager  to  plunder  each  other.     The  realm 
to  which  they  were  now  confined   would  not,  in  the 
phrase  of  Comines,  the  most  judicious  observer  of  that 
time,  suffice  for  them  all.     Two  aristocratical  factions, 
headed  by  two  branches  of  the  royal  family,  engaged 
in  a  long  and  fierce  struggle  for  supremacy.     As  the 
animosity  of  those  factions  did  not  really  arise  from  the 
dispute  aboiit  the   succession,  it  lasted  long  after  all 
groimd  of  disj)ute  about  the  succession  was  removed. 
The  party  of  the   Red   Rose  survived  the  last  prince 
who  claimed  the  crown  in  right  of  Henry  the  Fourth.  \ 
The  party  of  the  White  Rose  survived  the  marriage 
of  Richmond  and  Elizabeth.     Left  without  chiefs  who 
had  any  decent  show  of  right,  the  adherents  of  Lan- 
caster rallied  round  a  line  of  bastards,  and  the  adhe- 
rents of  York  set  up  a  succession  of  impostors.    When, 


24  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

at  length,  many  aspiring  nobles  had  perished  on  the 
field  of  battle  or  by  the  hands  of  the  executioner,  when 
many  illustrious  houses  had  disappeared  for  ever  from 
history,  when  those  great  families  which  remained  had 
been  exhausted  and  sobered  by  calamities,  it  was  uni- 
versally acknowledged  that  the  claims  of  all  the  con- 
tending Plantagenets  were  united  in  the  house  of 
Tudor. 

Meanwhile  a  change  was  proceeding  infinitely  more 
Extinction  of  momcntous  than  the  acquisition  or  loss  of 
▼iiieuage.  ^^^y.  province,  than  the  rise  or  fall  of  any 
dynasty.  Slavery  and  the  evils  by  which  slavery  is 
everywhere  accompanied  were  fast  disappearing. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  two  greatest  and  most  salu- 
tary social  revolutions  which  have  taken  place  in  Eng- 
land, that  revolution  which,  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
put  an  end  to  the  tyranny  of  nation  over  nation,  and 
that  revolution  which,  a  few  generations  later,  put  an 
end  to  the  property  of  man  in  man,  were  silently  and 
imperceptibly  effected.  They  struck  contemporary  ob- 
servers with  no  surprise,  and  have  received  fi'om  his- 
torians a  very  scanty  measure  of  attention.  They 
were  brought  about  neither  by  legislative  regulation 
nor  by  physical  force.  Moral  causes  noiselessly  effaced 
first  the  distinction  between  Noi^man  and  Saxon,  and 
then  the  distinction  between  master  and  slave,  None 
can  venture  to  fix  the  precise  moment  at  which  either 
distinction  ceased.  Some  faint  traces  of  the  old  Nor- 
man feeling  might  perhaps  have  been  found  late  in  the 
fourteenth  century.  Some  fl^int  traces  of  the  institu- 
tion of  villenage  were  detected  by  the  curious  so  late 
as  the  days  of  the  Stuarts ;  nor  has  that  institution 
ever,  to  this  hour,  been  abolished  by  statute. 

It  would  be  most  unjust  not  to  acknowledge  that  the 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    TilK    REbTOUATION.  25 

chief  agent  in  tliese  two  great  deliverances  was  relig- 
ion ;  and  it  may  perhaps  be  doubted  whether  Beneficial  op- 

,.     .  .     1   ,  ,1  I  p  I        eratioQ  of  the 

a  purer  religion  might  not  liave  been  tound  a  uoman  cath- 
less   efficient  agent.      The  benevolent   spirit  "^^  '''"«'""• 
of  the  Christian  morality  is  undoubtedly  adverse  to  dis- 
tinctions of  caste.     But  to  the  Church  of  Rome  such 
distinctions  are  peculiarly  odious  ;  for  they  are  incom- 
patible with  other  distinctions  which  are  essential  to  her 
system.     She  ascribes  to  every  priest  a  mysterious  dig- 
nity ^vhich  entitles  him  to  the  reverence  of  every  lay- 
man ;  and  she  does  not  consider  any  man  as  disquali- 
fied, by  reason  of  his  nation  or  of  his  family,  for  the 
priesthood.       Her   doctrines  res])ecting  the   sacerdotal 
character,  however  erroneous   they  may  be,  have  re- 
peatedly mitigated  some  of  the  worst  evils  which  can 
affiict  society.     That  superstition  cannot  be  regarded 
as  unmixedly  noxious  which,  in  regions  cursed  by  the 
tyranny  of  race  over  race,  creates  an  aristocracy  alto- 
gether, indejiendent   of  race,   inverts  the   relation  be- 
tween the  oppressor  and  the  oppressed,  and  compels 
the  hereditary  master  to  kneel  before  the  spiritual  tri- 
bunal of  the  hereditary  bondman.     To  this  day,  in  some 
countries  where  negro  slavery  exists.  Popery  appears 
in  advantageous  contrast  to  other  forms  of  Christianity. 
It  is  notorious  that  the  antipathy  between  the  Euro- 
pean and  African  races  is  by  no  means  so  strong  at 
Rio  Janeiro  as  at  Washington.     In  our  own  country 
this  peculiarity  of  the  Roman  Catholic  system  produced, 
durino-  the  middle  aires,  many  salutary  effects.     It  is 
true  that,  shortly  after  the  battle  of  Hastings,  Saxon 
i;>relates  and  abbots  Mere  violently  deposed,  and  that 
ecclesiastical  adventurers  from  the  Continent  were  in- 
truded by  hundreds  into  lucrative  benefices.     Yet  even 
then  pious  divines  of  Norman  blood  raised  their  voices 


26  HISTOKY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  ) 

acrainst  such  a  violation  of  the  constitution  of  the 
Church,  refused  to  accept  mitres  from  the  hands  o\ 
William,  and  charged  him,  on  the  peril  of  his  soul, 
not  to  forget  that  the  vanquished  islanders  were  his 
fellow  Christians.  The  first  {)rotector  whom  the  Eng- 
lish found  among  the  dominant  caste  was  Archbishop 
Anselm.  At  a  time  when  the  English  name  was  a 
reproach,  and  when  all  the  civil  and  military  dignities 
of  the  kingdom  were  supposed  to  belong  exclusively 
to  the  countrymen  of  the  Conqueror,  the  despised 
race  learned,  with  transports  of  delight,  that  one  of 
themselves,  Nicholas  Breakspear,  had  been  elevated 
to  the  papal  throne,  and  had  held  out  his  foot  to  be 
kissed  by  ambassadors  sprung  from  the  noblest  houses 
of  Normandy.  It  was  a  national  as  well  as  a  religious 
feelincp  that  drew  o;reat  multitudes  to  the  shrine  of 
Becket,  whom  they  regarded  as  the  enemy  of  their 
enemies.  Whether  he  was  a  Norman  or  a  Saxon  may 
be  doubted  :  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  perished 
by  Norman  hands,  and  that  the  Saxons  cherished  his 
memory  Avith  peculiar  tenderness  and  veneration,  and, 
in  their  popular  poetry,  represented  him  as  one  of 
their  own  race.  A  successor  of  Becket  was  foremost 
amono;  those  who  obtained  that  charter  which  secured 
at  once  the  privileges  of  the  Norman  barons  and  of 
the  Saxon  yeomanry.  How  great  a  part  the  Roman 
Catholic  ecclesiastics  subsequently  had  in  the  abolition 
of  villenage  we  learn  from  the  unexceptionable  testi- 
mony of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  one  of  the  ablest  Prot- 
estant counsellors  of  Elizabeth.  When  the  dying 
slaveholder  asked  for  the  last  sacraments,  his  spiritual 
attendants  reijularlv  adjured  him,  as  he  loved  his  soul, 
to  emancipate  his  brethren  for  whom  Christ  had  died. 
So  successfully  had  the  Church  used  her  formidable 
machinery  that,  before  the  Reformation  came,  she  had 


Ch.  I.l  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  27 

enfranchised  almost  all  the  bondmen  in  the  kingdom 
except  her  own,  who,  to  do  her  justice,  seem  to  have 
been  very  tenderly  treated. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  that,  when  these  two  great 
revolutions  had  been  effected,  our  forefathers  were  by 
far  tl)2  best  governed  people  in  Europe.  During  three 
hundred  years  the  social  system  had  been  in  a  constant 
course  of  improvement.  Under  the  first  Plantagenets 
there  had  been  barons  able  to  bid  defiance  to  the  sov- 
ereign, and  peasants  degraded  to  the  level  of  the  swine 
and  oxen  which  they  tended.  The  exorbitant  power 
of  the  baron  had  been  gradually  reduced.  The  con- 
dition of  the  peasant  had  been  gradually  elevated.  Be- 
tween the  aristocracy  and  the  working  people  had 
sprung  up  a  middle  class,  agricultural  and  commercial. 
There  was  still,  it  may  be,  more  inequality  than  is  fa- 
vourable to  the  happiness  and  virtue  of  our  species :  but 
no  man  was  altogether  above  the  restraints  of  law  ; 
and  no  man  was  altogether  below  its  protection. 

That  the  political  institutions  of  England  were,  at 
this  early  period,  regarded  by  the  English  with  pride 
and  affection,  and  by  the  most  enlightened  men  of 
neighbouring  nations  with  admiration  and  envy,  is 
proved  by  the  clearest  evidence.  But  touching  the 
nature  of  those  institutions,  there  has  been  much  dis- 
honest and  acrimonious  controversy. 

The  historical  literature  of  England  has  indeed  suf- 
fered  grievously  from  a  circumstance  which  The  eariy 
lias  not  a  little  contributed  to  her  prosj)erity.  ^y^oftcn  mis- 
The  change,  great  as  it  is,  which  her  polity  «p'-««'>"">'»- 
has  undergone  during  the  last  six  centuries,  has  been 
the  effect  of  gradual  develo])mcnt,  not  of  demolition 
and  reconstruction.  The  present  constitution  of  our 
country  is,  to  the  constitution  under  which  she  flour- 
ished five  hundred  years  ago,  what  the  tree  is  to  the 


28  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ce.  I 

sapling,  what  the  man  is  to  the  boy.  The  alteration 
has  been  great.  Yet  there  never  was  a  moment  at 
which  the  chief  part  of  what  existed  was  not  old.  A 
polity  thus  formed  must  abound  in  anomahes.  But  for 
the  evils  arising  from  mere  anomalies  we  have  ample 
compensation.  Other  societies  possess  written  consti- 
tutions more  symmetrical.  But  no  other  society  has 
yet  succeeded  in  uniting  revolution  with  prescription, 
progress  with  stability,  the  energy  of  youth  with  the 
majesty  of  immemorial  antiquity. 

This  great  blessing,  however,  has  its  drawbacks : 
and  one  of  those  drawbacks  is,  that  every  source  of  in- 
formation as  to  our  early  history  has  been  poisoned  by 
party  spirit.  As  there  is  no  country  where  statesmen 
have  been  so  much  under  the  influence  of  the  past,  so 
there  is  no  country  where  historians  have  been  so  much 
under  the  influence  of  the  present.  Between  these  two 
things,  indeed,  there  is  a  natural  connection.  Where 
history  is  regarded  merely  as  a  picture  of  life  and  man- 
ners, or  as  a  collection  of  experiments  from  which  gen- 
eral maxims  of  civil  wisdom  may  be  drawn,  a  wi'iter 
lies  under  no  very  pressing  temptation  to  misrepresent 
transactions  of  ancient  date.  But  where  history  is  re- 
garded as  a  repository  of  titledeeds,  on  which  the  rights 
of  governments  and  nations  depend,  the  motive  to  falsi- 
fication becomes  almost  irresistible.  A  Frenchman  is 
not  now  impelled  by  any  strong  interest  either  to  ex- 
aggerate or  to  underrate  the  power  of  the  kings  of  the 
house  of  Valois.  The  privileges  of  the  States  General, 
of  the  States  of  Britanny,  of  the  States  of  Burgundy, 
are  to  him  matters  of  as  little  practical  importance  as  the 
constitution  of  the  Jewish  Sanhedrim,  or  of  the  Am- 
jihictyonic  Council.  The  gulph  of  a  great  revolution 
completely  separates  the  new  from  the  old  system.  No 
such  chasm  divides  the  existence  of  tiie  English  nati(m 


Ch.  I.]  BEFOEE   THE    RESTORATION.  29 

into  two  distinct  pai'ts.  Our  laws  and  customs  liave 
never  been  lost  in  general  and  irreparable  ruin.  With 
us  the  precedents  of  the  middle  ages  are  still  valid  jn-e- 
cedents,  and  are  still  cited,  on  the  gravest  occasions, 
by  the  most  eminent  statesmen.  For  example,  when 
King  George  the  Third  was  attacked  by  the  malady 
which  made  him  incapable  of  performing  his  regal 
functions,  and  when, the  most  distinguished  law^^^-rs 
and  politicians  differed  widely  as  to  the  course  which 
ought,  in  such  circumstances,  to  be  pursued,  the  Houses 
of  Parliament  would  not  proceed  to  discuss  any  plan 
of  regency  till  all  the  precedents  which  were  to  be 
found  in  our  annals,  from  the  earliest  times,  had  been 
collected  and  arranged.  Committees  were  appointed 
to  examine  the  ancient  records  of  the  realm.  The  first 
case  reported  was  that  of  the  year  1217  :  much  impor- 
tance was  attached  to  the  cases  of  182(>,  of  1377,  and 
of  1422  :  but  the  case  which  was  justly  considered  as 
most  in  point  was  that  of  1455.  Thus  in  our  country 
the  dearest  interests  of  parties  have  frequently  been 
staked  on  the  results  of  the  researches  of  antiquaries. 
The  inevitable  consequence  was,  that  our  antiquaries 
conducted  their  researches  in  the  spirit  of  partisans. 
It  is  therefore  not  surprising  that  those  who  have 
written  concerning  the  limits  of  prerogative  and  liberty 
in  the  old  polity  of  England  should  generally  have 
shown  the  temper,  not  of  judges,  but  of  angry  and 
uncandid  advocates.  For  they  wei'e  discussing,  not  a 
speculative  matter,  but  a  matter  which  had  a  direct 
and  practical  connection  with  the  most  momentous  :iiid 
exciting  disputes  of  their  own  day.  From  the  com- 
mencement of  the  long  contest  between  the  Parliament 
and  the  Stuarts  down  to  the  time  when  the  pretensions 
of  the  Stuarts  ceased  to  be  formidable,  few  questions 
were    practically   more    important    than    tho    question 


30  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

whether  the  administration  of  tliat  family  had  or  had 
not  been  in  accordance  witli  the  ancient  constitution 
of  tlie  kingdom.  This  question  could  be  decided  only 
by  reference  to  the  records  of  preceding  reigns.  Brac- 
ton  and  Fleta,  the  Mirror  of  Justice  and  the  Rolls  of 
Parliament,  were  ransacked  to  find  pretexts  for  the 
excesses  of  the  Star  Chamber  on  one  side,  and  of  the 
High  Court  of  Justice  on  the  other.  During  a  long 
course  of  years  every  Whig  historian  was  anxious  to 
prove  that  the  old  English  government  was  all  but 
republican,  every  Tory  historian  to  prove  that  it  was 
all  but  despotic. 

With  such  feelings,  both  parties  looked  into  the  chron- 
icles of  the  middle  ages.  Both  readily  found  what  they 
sought ;  and  both  obstinately  refused  to  see  anything 
but  what  they  sought.  The  champions  of  the  Stuarts 
could  easily  point  out  instances  of  oppression  exercised 
on  the  subject.  The  defenders  of  the  Roundheads 
could  as  easily  produce  instances  of  determined  and 
successflil  resistance  offered  to  the  Crown.  The  Tories 
quoted,  from  ancient  writings,  expressions  almost  as 
servile  as  were  heard  from  the  pulpit  of  Mainwaring. 
The  Whigs  discovered  expressions  as  bold  and  severe 
as  any  that  resounded  from  the  judgment  seat  of  Brad- 
shaw.  One  set  of  writers  adduced  numerous  instances 
in  which  Kings  had  extorted  money  without  the  au- 
thority of  Parliament.  Another  set  cited  cases  in 
which  the  Parliament  had  assumed  to  itself  the  power 
of  inflicting  punishment  on  Kings.  Those  who  saw 
only  one  half  of  the  evidence  would  have  concluded 
Uiat  the  Plantagenets  were  as  absolute  as  the  Sultans 
'^)f  Turkey  :  those  who  saw  only  the  other  half  would 
^lave  concluded  that  the  Plantag-enets  had  as  little  real 
^)ower  as  the  Doges  of  Venice ;  and  both  conclusions 
would  have  l>een  equally  remote  from  the  truth. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  31 

The  old  English  government  was  one  of  a  class  of 
limited  monarchies  which  sprang  np  in  West-  Mature  of  the 
ern  Europe  during  tlie  nn'ddle  ages,  and  archils  oTthe 
which,  notwithstanding  many  diversities,  bore  ""J'^'«''se»- 
to  one  another  a  strong  familv  likeness.  That  th.ere 
should  have  been  such  a  likeness  is  not  strange.  The 
countries  in  which  those  monarchies  arose  had  lu'en 
provinces  of  the  same  great  civilised  empire,  and  had 
been  overrun  and  conquered,  about  the  same  time,  by 
tribes  of  the  same  rude  and  warlike  nation.  Tiu'y 
were  members  of  the  same  great  coalition  against  Is- 
lam.  They  were  in  communion  with  the  same  sujierb 
and  ambitious  Church.  Their  polity  naturally  took  the 
same  form.  They  had  institutions  derived  partly  from 
imperial  Rome,  partly  from  pajial  Rome,  partly  fr<im 
the  old  Germany.  All  had  Kings ;  and  in  all  the 
kingly  office  became  by  degrees  strictly  hereditary. 
All  iiad  nobles  bearing  titles  which  had  originallv  indi- 
Gated  military  rank.  The  dignity  of  knighthood,  the 
rules  of  heraldry,  were  common  to  all.  All  had  richly 
endowed  ecclesiastical  establishments,  municipal  cor- 
porations enjoying  large  franchises,  and  senates  whose 
consent  was  necessary  to  the  validity  of  some  public 
acts. 

Of  these  kindred  constitutions  the  English  was,  from 
an  early  period,  justly  reputed  the  best.  The  pr^roRatiTea 
prei'ogatives  of  the  sovereign  were  undoubt-  ]^,gi\gi,'^'^'-^ 
edly  extensive.  'J'he  spirit  of  religion,  and  ^''"''^' 
the  spirit  of  chivalry,  concurred  to  exalt  his  dignity. 
The  sacred  oil  had  been  poured  on  his  head.  It  was 
no  dis|)aiagement  to  the  bravest  and  noblest  knights  to 
kneel  at  his  feet.  His  jierson  was  inviolal)le.  He  alone 
was  entitled  to  convoke  the  Estates  of  the  realm  :  he 
could  at  his  pleasure  dismiss  them  ;  and  his  assent  was 


82'  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

necessary  to  all  their  legislative  acts.  He  was  the  chief 
of  the  executive  administration,  the  sole  organ  of  com- 
munication with  foreign  powers,  the  captain  of  the 
military  and  naval  forces  of  the  state,  the  fountain  of 
justice,  of  mercy,  and  of  honour.  He  had  large  powers 
for  the  regulation  of  trade.  It  was  by  him  that  money 
was  coined,  that  weights  and  measures  were  fixed,  that 
marts  and  havens  were  appointed.  His  ecclesiastical 
patronage  was  immense.  His  hereditary  revenues, 
economically  administered,  sufficed  to  meet  the  ordi- 
nary charges  of  government.  His  own  domains  were 
of  vast  extent.  He  was  also  feudal  lord  paramount  of 
the  whole  soil  of  his  kingdom,  and,  in  that  capacity, 
possessed  many  lucrative  and  many  formidable  riglits, 
which  enabled  him  to  annoy  and  depress  those  who 
thwarted  him,  and  to  enrich  and  aggrandise,  without 
any  cost  to  hnnself,  those  who  enjoyed  his  favour. 

But  his  power,  though  ample,  was  limited  by  three 
Limitations    great  Constitutional  orinciples,  so  ancient  that 

of  the  pre-  i  'i  i 

rogative.  iioue  Can  Say  wlien  they  began  to  exist,  so  po- 
tent that  their  natural  development,  continued  through 
many  generations,  has  produced  the  order  of  things 
under  which  we  now  live. 

First,  the  King  could  not  legislate  without  the  con- 
sent of  his  Parliament.  Secondly,  he  could  impose  no 
taxes  without  the  consent  of  his  Parliament.  Thirdly, 
he  was  bound  to  conduct  the  executive  administration 
according  to  the  laws  of  the  land,  and,  if  he  broke  those 
laws,  his  advisers  and  his  agents  were  responsible. 

No  candid  Tory  will  deny  that  these  principles  had, 
five  hundred  years  ago,  acquired  the  authority  of  fun- 
damental rules.  On  the  other  hand,  no  candid  Whig 
will  affirn:  that  they  were,  till  a  later  period,  cleared 
from  all  ambiguity,  or  followed  out  to  all  their  conse- 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  83 

quences.  A  constitution  of  the  middle  ages  was  not, 
like  a  constitution  of  the  eighteenth  or  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, created  entire  by  a  single  act,  and  fully  set  forth 
in  a  single  document.  It  is  only  in  a  refined  and  spec- 
ulative ago  that  a  polity  is  constructed  on  system.  In 
rude  societies  the  progress  ot  government  resembles 
the  progi'ess  of  language  and  of  versification.  Rude 
societies  have  language,  and  often  copious  and  ener- 
getic language  :  but  they  have  no  scientific  grammar, 
no  definitions  of  nouns  and  verbs,  no  names  for  declen- 
sions, moods,  tenses,  and  voices.  Rude  societies  have 
versification,  and  often  versification  of  great  powder  and 
sweetness  :  but  they  have  no  metrical  canons  ;  and  the 
minstrel  whose  numbers,  regulated  solely  by  his  ear, 
are  the  delight  of  his  audience,  would  himself  be  unable 
to  say  of  how  many  dactyls  and  trochees  each  of  his 
lines  consists.  As  eloquence  exists  before  syntax,  and 
song  before  prosody,  so  government  may  exist  in  a 
hio-h  decree  of  excellence  lono;  before  the  limits  of 
legislative,  executive,  and  judicial  power  have  been 
traced  with  precision. 

It  was  thus  in  our  country.  The  line  which  bounded 
the  royal  prerogative,  though  in  general  sufficiently 
clear,  had  not  everywhere  been  drawn  with  accuracy 
and  distinctness.  There  was,  therefore,  near  the  bor- 
der some  debatable  ground  on  which  incursions  and  re- 
prisals continued  to  tiike  ])lacc,  till,  after  ages  of  strife, 
plain  and  durable  landmarks  were  at  length  set  up.  It 
may  be  instructive  to  note  in  what  way,  and  to  what 
extent,  our  ancient  sovereigns  were  in  the  habit  of 
violating  the  three  great  principles  by  which  the  liber- 
ties of  the  nation  were  protected. 

No  English  King  has  ever  laid  claim  to  the  general 
legislative    power.     The    most  violent   and  imperious 

VOL.    t.  3 


34  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Oh.  L 

Planlagenet  never  fancied  himself  competent  to  enact, 
vvithout  the  consent  of  his  great  council,  that  a  jury 
should  consist  of  ten  persons  instead  of  twelve,  that  a 
widow's  dower  should  be  a  fourth  part  instead  of  a 
third,  that  perjury  should  be  a  felony,  or  that  the  cus- 
tom of  gavelkind  should  be  introduced  into  Yorkshire.^ 
But  the  King  had  the  power  of  pardoning  offenders  ' 
and  there  is  one  point  at  which  the  power  of  pardoning 
and  the  power  of  legislating  seem  to  fade  into  each 
(^ther,  and  may  easily,  at  least  in  a  simple  age,  be  con- 
founded. A  penal  statute  is  virtually  annulled  if  the 
penalties  which  it  imposes  are  regularly  remitted  as 
often  as  they  are  incurred.  The  sovereign  was  un- 
doubtedly competent  to  remit  penalties  without  limit. 
He  was  therefore  competent  to  annul  virtually  a  penal 
statute.  It  mio-ht  seem  that  there  could  be  no  serious 
objection  to  his  doing  formally  what  he  might  do  virtu- 
ally. Thus,  with  the  help  of  subtle  and  courtly  law- 
yers, grew  up,  on  the  doubtful  fi'ontier  which  separates 
executive  from  legislative  functions,  that  great  anomaly 
known  as  the  dispensing  power. 

That  the  King  could  not  impose  taxes  without  the 
consent  of  Parliament  is  admitted  to  have  been,  from 
time  immemorial,  a  fundamental  law  of  England.  It 
was  among  the  articles  which  John  was  compelled  by 
the  Barons  to  sign.  Edward  the  First  ventured  to 
break  through  the  rule  :  but,  able,  powerful,  and  popu- 
lar as  he  was,  he  encountered  an  opposition  to  which 
he  found  it  expedient  to  yield.  He  covenanted  accord- 
ingly in  express  terms,  for  himself  and  his  heirs,  that 
ihey  would  never  again  levy  any  aid  without  the  assent 
und  good- will  of  the  Estates  of  the  realm.     His  power- 

i  This  is  excellently  put  by  Mr.  Hallam  in  the  first  chapter  of  his  Con- 
Blitutional  History. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTOEATION.  35 

fill  and  victorious  grandson  attempted  to  violate  tins 
solemn  compact :  but  the  attempt  was  strenuously  w^ith- 
stood.  At  length  the  Plantagenets  gave  up  the  point 
in  despair  ;  but  though  they  ceased  to  infringe  tlie  law 
openly,  they  occasionally  contrived,  by  evading  it,  to 
procure  an  extraordinary  su]:)j)ly  for  a  temporary  pur- 
pose. They  were  interdicted  from  taxing ;  but  they 
claimed  the  right  of  begging  and  borrowing.  They 
therefore  sometimes  begged  in  a  tone  not  to  be  distin- 
guished from  that  of  command,  and  sometimes  borrowed 
with  small  thought  of  repaying.  But  the  fact  that  it 
was  thought  necessary  to  disguise  these  exactions  under 
the  names  of  benevolences  and  loans  sufficiently  proves 
that  the  authority  of  the  great  constitutional  rule  was 
universally  recognised. 

The  princij)le  that  the  King  of  England  was  bound 
to  conduct  the  administration  according  to  law,  and 
that,  if  he  did  anything  against  law,  his  advisers  and 
agents  were  answerable,  was  established  at  a  very 
early  period,  as  the  severe  judgments  pronounced  and 
executed  on  many  royal  favourites  sufficiently  prove.  It 
is,  however,  certain  that  the  riglits  of  individuals  were 
often  violated  by  the  Plantagenets,  and  that  the  in- 
jured ])arties  were  often  unable  to  obtain  redress.  Ac- 
cording to  law  no  Englishman  could  be  arrested  or 
detained  in  confinement  merely  by  the  mandate  of  the 
sovereign.  In  fact,  i)ersons  obnoxious  to  the  govern- 
ment were  frequently  imprisoned  without  any  other 
authority  than  a  royal  order.  According  to  law,  tor- 
ture, the  disgrace  of  the  Roman  jurisprudence,  could 
not,  in  any  circumstances,  be  inflicted  on  an  Enolisli 
subject.  Nevertheless,  during  the  troubles  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  a  rack  was  introduced  into  the  Tower, 
and  was  occasionally  used  under  tlw  plea  of  political 


86  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  LCh.  L 

necessity.  But  it  Avould  be  a  oreat  error  to  infer  from 
such  iiu-egularities  that  the  EngHsh  monarchs  were, 
either  in  theory  or  in  practice,  absolute.  We  live  in 
a  highly  civilised  society,  in  which  intelligence  is  so 
rapidly  diffused  by  means  of  the  press  and  of  the  post 
office,  that  any  gross  act  of  oppression  committed  in 
any  part  of  oar  island  is,  in  a  few  hours,  discussed  by 
millions.  If  the  sovereign  were  now  to  immure  a  sub- 
ject in  defiance  of  the  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus,  or  to  put 
a  conspirator  to  the  torture,  the  whole  nation  would  be 
instantly  electrified  by  the  news.  In  the  middle  ages 
the  state  of  society  was  widely  different.  Rarely  and 
with  great  difficulty  did  the  wrongs  of  individuals  come 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  public.  A  man  might  be  ille- 
gally confined  during  many  months  in  the  castle  of 
Carlisle  or  Norwich  ;  and  no  whisper  of  the  transac- 
tion might  reach  London.  It  is  highly  probable  that 
the  rack  had  been  many  years  in  use  before  the  great 
majority  of  the  nation  had  the  least  suspicion  that  it 
was  ever  employed.  Nor  were  our  ancestors  by  any 
means  so  much  alive  as  we  are  to  the  importance  of 
maintaining  great  general  rules.  We  have  been  taught 
by  long  expei'ience  that  we  cannot  without  danger  suf- 
fer any  breach  of  the  constitution  to  pass  unnoticed.  It 
is  therefore  now  universally  held  that  a  government 
which  unnecessarily  exceeds  its  powers  ought  to  be 
visited  with  severe  parliamentary  censure,  and  that  a 
government  which,  under  the  pressure  of  a  great  exi- 
gency, and  with  pure  intentions,  has  exceeded  its  pow- 
ers, ought  without  delay  to  apply  to  Parliament  for  an 
act  of  indemnity.  But  such  were  not  the  feelings  of  the 
Euiilishmen  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries. 
They  were  little  disposed  to  contend  for  a  princij)le 
merely  as  a  principle,  or  to  cry  out  against  an  iri'egu- 


Ch.  I,]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  37 

larlty  which  was  not  also  felt  to  be  a  grievance.  As 
long  as  the  general  spirit  of  the  administration  was  mild 
and  popular,  they  were  Avilling  to  allow  some  latitude 
to  their  sovereign.  If,  for  ends  generally  acknowledged 
to  be  good,  he  exerted  a  vigour  beyond  the  law,  they 
not  only  forgave,  but  applauded  him,  and,  while  tliey 
enjoyed  security  and  prosperity  under  his  rule,  were  but 
too  ready  to  believe  that  whoever  had  incurred  his  dis- 
pleasure liad  deserved  it.  But  to  this  indulgence  there 
was  a  limit :  nor  was  that  King  wise  who  presumed  far 
on  the  forbearance  of  the  English  people.  They  might 
sometimes  allow  him  to  overstep  the  constitutional  line  ; 
but  they  also  claimed  the  privilege  of  overstepping  that 
line  themselves,  whenever  his  encroachments  were  so 
serious  as  to  excite  alarm.  If,  not  content  with  occa- 
sionally oppressing  individuals,  he  dared  to  oppress 
great  masses,  his  subjects  promptly  appealed  to  the 
laws,  and,  that  ai)peal  failing,  appealed  as  promptly  to 
the  God  of  battles. 

Our  forefathers  might  indeed  safely  tolerate  a  kmg 
in  a  few  excesses ;  for  they  had  in  reserve  a   Resistance 
check  which    soon  brouiiht  the  fiercest  and   !^,""I!'''""'""^ 

^^  *  11(31  K  UIl 

proudest  king  to  reason,  the  check  of  physi-  the'm'uidic 
cal  force.  It  is  difhcult  for  an  Eno;lisliman  '**'''"*■ 
of  the  nineteenth  century  to  image  to  himself  the  fa- 
cilitv  and  rapidity  with  which,  four  hundred  years  ago, 
this  check  was  a})plied.  The  people  have  long  un- 
learned the  use  of  arms.  The  art  of  war  has  been  ear- 
ned to  a  perfection  unknown  to  former  ages,  and  the 
knowledge  of  that  art  is  confined  to  a  ])articnlar  class. 
A  hundred  thousand  soldiers,  well  disciplined  and  com- 
manded, will  keep  down  ten  millions  of  ploughmen  and 
artisans.  A  few  regiments  of  household  troops  are 
sufiicient  to  overawe  all  the  discontented  spirits  of  a 


S8  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I 

large  capital.  In  the  meajitime  tlie  effect  of  the  con- 
stant progress  of  weahh  has  been  to  make  insurrection 
far  more  terrible  to  thinking  men  than  maladministra- 
tion. Immense  sums  have  been  expended  on  works 
Avhich,  if  a  rebellion  broke  out,  might  perish  in  a  few 
hours.  The  mass  of  moveable  wealth  collected  in  the 
shops  and  warehouses  of  London  alone  exceeds  five- 
hundredfold  that  which  the  Avhole  island  contained  in 
the  days  of  the  Plantagenets  ;  and,  if  the  government 
were  subverted  by  physical  force,  all  this  moveable 
wealth  would  be  exposed  to  imminent  risk  of  spolia- 
tion and  destruction.  Still  greater  would  be  the  risk 
to  public  credit,  on  which  thousands  of  families  directly 
depend  for  subsistence,  and  with  which  the  credit  of 
the  whole  commercial  world  is  inseparably  connected. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  a  civil  war  of  a  week 
on  English  ground  would  now  ])roduce  disasters  which 
would  be  felt  from  the  Hoangho  to  the  Missouri,  and 
of  which  the  traces  would  be  discernible  at  the  dis- 
tance of  a  century.  In  such  a  state  of  society  resist- 
ance must  be  regarded  as  a  cure  more  desperate  than 
almost  any  malady  which  can  afflict  the  state.  In  the 
middle  ages,  on  the  contrary,  resistance  was  an  ordi- 
nary remedy  for  political  distempers,  a  remedy  which 
was  always  at  hand,  and  which,  though  doubtless  sharp 
at  the  moment,  produced  no  deep  or  lasting  ill  effects. 
If  a  popular  chief  raised  his  standard  in  a  popular  cause, 
an  irregular  army  could  be  assembled  in  a  day.  Regu- 
lar armv  there  was  none.  Every  man  had  a  slio;ht 
tincture  of  soldiership,  and  scarcely  any  man  more 
than  a  slight  tincture.  The  national  Avealth  consisted 
chiefly  in  flocks  and  herds,  in  the  harvest  of  the  year, 
and  in  the  simple  buildings  inhabited  by  the  people. 
All  the  furniture,  the  stock  of  shops,  the  machinery 


Ch    I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  39 

wliith  could  be  found  in  the  realm  was  of  less  value 
than  the  property  which  some  single  parishes  now  con- 
tain. Manufactures  were  rude,  credit  almost  unknown. 
Society,  therefore,  recovered  from  the  shock  as  soon  as 
the  actual  conflict  was  over.  The  calamities  of  civil 
war  were  confined  to  the  slauo;hter  on  the  field  of  bat- 
tie.  and  to  a  few  subsequent  executions  and  confisca- 
tions. In  a  week  the  peasant  was  driving  his  team  and 
the  esquire  flying  his  hawks  over  the  field  of  Towton, 
or  of  liosworth,  as  if  no  extraordinary  event  had  inter- 
nipted  the  regular  course  of  human  life. 

More  than  a  hundred  and  sixty  years  have  now 
elapsed  since  the  English  people  have  by  force  subverted 
a  government.  During  the  hundred  and  sixty  years 
which  preceded  the  union  of  the  Roses,  nine  Kings 
reiffued  in  Eujrlund.  Six  of  these  nine  Kings  were 
dei)osed.  Five  lost  their  lives  as  well  as  their  crowns. 
It  is  evident,  tlierefoi'e,  that  any  comparison  between 
our  ancient  and  our  modern  polity  must  lead  to  most 
erroneous  conclusions,  unless  large  allowance  be  made 
for  the  eft^ect  of  that  restraint  which  resistance  and  the 
fear  of  resistance  constantly  imj)osed  on  the  Plantage- 
nets.  As  our  ancestors  had  against  tyranny  a  most 
nnportant  security  which  we  Avant,  they  migiit  safely 
disj)ense  with  some  securities  to  which  we  justly  attach 
the  highest  importance.  As  we  cannot,  without  the 
risk  of  evils  from  wiiich  the  imagination  recoils,  employ 
physical  force  as  a  check  on  misgovernment,  it  is  evi- 
dently our  wivdom  to  keep  all  the  constitutional  checks 
on  misgovernment  in  the  highest  state  of  efficiency,  to 
watch  with  jealousy  the  first  beginnings  of  encroacli- 
ment,  and  never  to  suffer  irregularities,  even  when 
harmless  in  themselves,  to  pass  unchallenged,  lest  they 
acquire  the  force  of  precedents.     Four  hundred  years 


40  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

ago  sucli  minute  vigilance  might  well  seem  unnecessary. 
A  nation  ot  hardy  archers  and  spearmen  might,  with 
small  risk  to  its  liberties,  connive  at  some  illegal  acts 
on  the  part  of  a  prince  whose  general  administration 
was  good,  and  whose  throne  was  not  defended  by  a 
single  company  of  regular  soldiers. 

Under  this  system,  rude  as  it  may  appear  when  com- 
pared with  those  elaborate  constitutions  of  which  the 
last  seventy  years  have  been  fruitful,  the  English  long 
enjoyed  a  large  measure  of  freedom  and  happiness. 
Though  during  the  feeble  reign  of  Henry  the  Sixth 
the  state  was  torn  first  by  factions,  and  at  length  by 
civil  war,  though  Edward  the  Fourth  was  a  prince  of 
dissolute  and  imperious  character,  though  Richard  the 
Third  has  generally  been  represented  as  a  monster  of 
depravity,  though  the  exactions  of  Henry  the  Seventh 
caused  great  repining,  it  is  certain  that  our  ancestors, 
under  those  Kings,  were  far  better  governed  than  the 
Belgians  under  Philip,  surnanied  the  Good,  or  the 
French  under  that  Lewis  who  was  styled  the  Father 
of  his  peoj)le.  Even  while  the  wars  of  the  Roses  were 
actually  raging,  our  country  appears  to  have  been  in  a 
happier  condition  than  the  neighbouring  realms  during 
years  of  profound  peace.  Comines  was  one  of  the  most 
enlightened  statesmen  of  his  time.  He  had  seen  all  the 
richest  and  most  highly  civilised  parts  of  the  Continent. 
He  had  lived  in  the  opulent  towns  of  Flanders,  the 
Manchesters  and  Liverpools  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
He  had  visited  Florence,  recently  adorned  by  the  mag- 
nificence of  Lorenzo,  and  Venice,  not  yet  humbled  by 
the  confederates  of  Canibray.  This  eminent  man  de- 
liberately pronounced  England  to  be  the  best  governed 
country  of  which  he  had  any  knowledge.  Her  consti- 
tution  he  emphatically  designated  as   a  just  and  holy 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  41 

thing,  wliicli,  while  it  protected  tlie  people,  really 
strengthened  the  hands  of  a  jn'ince  who  respected  it. 
In  no  other  country,  he  said,  were  men  so  effectually 
secured  from  wrong.  The  calamities  produced  by  our 
intestine  wars  seemed  to  him  to  be  confined  to  the 
nobles  and  the  fighting  men,  and  to  leave  no  traces 
such  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to  see  elsewhere,  no 
ruined  dwellings,  no  depopulated  cities. 

It  was  not  only  by  the  efficiency  of  the  restraints 
imposed  on  the  royal  preroo;ative  that  Ena;-  Peculiar 

^  ...  .  clKinicter 

land  was  advantaoeously  distincniished  from  of  the 
most  or  the  neighbourmg  countries.  A  pecu-  aristocracy. 
harity  equally  important,  though  less  noticed,  was  the 
relation  in  which  the  nobility  stood  here  to  the  com- 
monalty. There  was  a  strong  hereditary  aristoc- 
racy :  but  it  was  of  all  hereditary  aristocracies  the 
least  insolent  and  exclusive.  It  had  none  of  the  in- 
vidious character  of  a  caste.  It  was  constantly  receiv- 
ing members  from  the  people  and  constantly  sending 
down  members  to  mingle  with  the  people.  Any  gen- 
tleman might  become  a  peer.  The  younger  son  of  a 
peer  was  but  a  gentleman.  Grandsons  of  peers  yielded 
precedence  to  newly-made  knights.  The  dignity  of 
knio-hthood  was  not  bevond  the  reach  of  anv  man  who 
could  by  diligence  and  thrift  realise  a  good  estate,  or 
who  could  attract  notice  by  his  valour  in  a  battle  or  a 
siege.  It  was  regarded  as  no  disparagement  for  the 
daughter  of  a  Duke,  nay  of  a  royal  Duke,  to  espouse 
a  distinguished  commoner.  Thus,  Sir  John  Howard 
married  the  daughter  of  Thomas  Mowbray  Duke  of 
Norfolk.  Sir  Richard  Pole  married  the  Countess  of 
Salisburv,  dauiihter  of  Georo;e  Duke  of  Clarence. 
Good  blood  was  indeed  held  in  high  respect  :  but 
between   good   blood    and    the    privileges    of  peerage 


43  niKTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

there  was,  most  fortunately  for  our  country,  no  neces- 
sary connection.  Pedigrees  as  long,  and  scutclieons 
as  old,  were  to  be  found  out  of  the  House  of  Lords  as 
in  it.  There  were  new  men  who  bore  the  highest 
titles.  There  were  untitled  men  well  known  to  be 
descended  from  knights  who  had  broken  the  Saxon 
ranks  at  Hastings,  and  scaled  the  walls  of  Jerusalem. 
Theie  were  Bohuns,  Mowbrays,  De  Veres,  nay  kins- 
men of  the  House  of  Plantagenet,  with  no  higher  ad- 
dition than  that  of  esquire,  and  with  no  civil  privileges 
beyond  those  enjoyed  by  every  farmer  and  shopkeeper. 
There  was  therefore  here  no  line  like  that  which  in 
some  other  countries  divided  the  patrician  from  the 
plebeian.  The  yeoman  was  not  inclined  to  murmur 
at  dififnities  to  which  his  own  children  might  rise.  The 
grandee  was  not  inclined  to  insult  a  class  into  which 
his  own  children  must  descend. 

After  the  wars  of  York  and  Lancaster,  the  links 
which  connected  the  nobility  and  the  commonalty 
became  closer  and  more  numerous  than  ever.  The 
extent  of  the  destruction  M'hich  had  fallen  on  the  old 
aristocracy  may  be  inferred  from  a  single  circumstance. 
In  the  year  1451  Henry  the  Sixth  summoned  fifty- 
three  temporal  Lords  to  parliament.  The  temporal 
Lords  summoned  by  Henry  the  Seventh  to  the  parlia- 
ment of  1485  were  only  twenty-nine,  and  of  these 
twentv-nine  several  had  recently  been  elevated  to  the 
peerage.  During  the  following  century  the  ranks  of 
the  nobility  were  largely  recruited  from  among  the 
gentry.  The  constitution  of  the  House  of  Commons 
tended  greatly  to  promote  the  salutary  intermixture  of 
classes.  The  knight  of  the  shire  was  the  connecting 
link  between  the  baron  and  the  shopkeeper.  On  the 
same  benches   on  which   sate   the  goldsmiths,  drapers, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  48 

and  grocers  who  had  been  returned  to  parliament  by 
the  commercial  towns,  sate  also  members  Avho,  in  any 
other  country,  would  have  been  called  noblemen,  he- 
reditary lords  of  manors,  entitled  to  hold  courts  and  to 
bear  coat  armour,  and  able  to  trace  back  an  honourable 
descent  through  many  generations.  Some  of  them 
were  younscer  sons  and  brothers  of  lords.  Others  could 
boast  even  of  royal  blood.  At  length  the  eldest  son 
of  an  Earl  of  Bedford,  called  in  courtesy  by  the  sec- 
ond title  of  his  father,  offered  himself  as  candidate  for 
a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  his  example 
was  followed  by  others.  Seated  in  that  house,  the 
heirs  of  the  great  peers  naturally  became  as  zealous 
for  its  privileges  as  any  of  the  humble  burgesses  witli 
whom  they  were  mingled.  Thus  our  democracy  was, 
fi'om  an  early  period,  the  most  aristocratic,  and  our 
aristocracy  tlie  most  democratic  in  the  world ;  a  pecu- 
liarity which  has  lasted  down  to  the  present  day,  and 
"which  has  produced  many  important  moral  and  polit- 
ical effects. 

The  government  of  Henry  the  Seventh,  of  his  son, 
and  of  his  grandchildren  was,  on  the  whole,  Qovernment 
more  arbitrary''  than  that  of  the  Plantagenets.  Tudors. 
Personal  character  may  in  some  degree  explain  the 
difference  ;  for  courage  and  force  of  will  were  com- 
mon to  all  the  men  and  women  of  the  House  of  Tudor. 
They  exercised  their  power  during  a  period  of  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty  years,  always  with  vigour,  often  with 
violence,  sometimes  with  cruelty.  They,  in  imitation 
of  the  dynasty  which  had  preceded  them,  occasionally 
invaded  the  rights  of  the  subject,  occasionally  exacted 
taxes  under  the  name  of  loans  and  gifts,  and  occasion- 
ally dispensed  with  penal  statutes ;  nay,  though  they 
oever  presumed  to  enact  any  permanent  law  by  their 


14  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [On.  I 

own  authority,  they  occasionally  took  upon  themselves, 
when  Parliament  was  not  sitting,  to  meet  temporary 
exigencies  by  temporary  edicts.  It  was,  however,  im  • 
possible  for  the  Tudors  to  carry  oppression  beyond  a 
certain  point :  for  they  had  no  armed  force,  and  they 
were  surrounded  by  an  armed  people.  The  palace  was 
guarded  by  a  few  domestics  whom  the  array  of  a  single 
shire,  or  of  a  single  ward  of  London,  could  with  ease 
have  overpowered.  These  haughty  princes  were  there- 
fore under  a  restraint  stronger  than  any  whii;h  mere 
laws  can  impose,  under  a  restraint  which  did  not,  indeed, 
prevent  them  from  sometimes  treating  an  individual  in 
an  arbitrary  and  even  in  a  barbarous  manner,  but  which 
effectually  secured  the  nation  against  general  and  long 
continued  oppression.  They  might  safely  be  tyrants 
within  the  precinct  of  the  court :  but  it  was  necessary 
for  them  to  watch  with  constant  anxiety  the  temper  of 
the  country.  Henry  the  Eighth,  for  example,  encoun- 
tered no  opposition  when  he  wished  to  send  Bucking- 
ham and  Surrey,  Anne  Boleyn  and  Lady  Salisbury,  to 
the  scaffold.  But  when,  without  the  consent  of  Par- 
liament, he  demanded  of  his  subjects  a  conti'ibution 
amounting  to  one  sixth  of  their  goods,  he  soon  fovxnd 
it  necessary  to  retract.  The  cry  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands was  that  they  were  English  and  not  French, 
freemen  and  not  slaves.  In  Kent  the  royal  commis- 
sioners fled  for  their  lives.  In  Suffolk  four  thousand 
men  appeared  in  arms.  The  King's  lieutenants  in  that 
county  vainly  exerted  themselves  to  raise  an  army. 
Those  who  did  not  join  in  the  insurrection  decl  ired 
that  they  would  not  fight  against  their  brethren  in 
such  a  quarrel.  Henry,  proud  and  selfwilled  as  he 
was,  shrank,  not  without  reason,  fi-om  a  conflict  with 
the  roused  spirit  of  the  nation.     He   had  before  his 


1 


Ch   I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  46 

eyes  tlie  fate  of  his  predecessors  who  had  perished  at 
Berkeley  and  Pomfret.  He  not  only  cancelled  his 
illegal  commissions  ;  he  not  only  granted  a  general 
pardon  to  all  the  malecontents ;  but  he  publicly  and 
solemnly  apologized  for  his  infraction  of  the  laws. 

His  conduct,  on  this  occasion,  well  illustrates  the 
whole  policy  of  his  house.  The  temper  of  the  princes 
of  that  line  was  hot,  and  their  spirit  high  :  but  they 
understood  the  character  of  the  nation  which  they  gov- 
erned, and  never  once,  like  some  of  their  predecessors, 
and  some  of  their  successors,  cai'ried  obstinacy  to  a  fatal 
point.  The  discretion  of  the  Tudors  was  such,  that 
their  power,  though  it  was  often  resisted,  was  never 
subverted.  The  reign  of  every  one  of  them  was  dis- 
turbed by  formidable  discontents  :  but  the  government 
was  always  able  either  to  sooth  the  mutineers,  or  tc 
conquer  and  punish  them.  Sometimes,  by  timely  con- 
cessions, it  succeeded  in  averting  civil  hostilities  ;  but  in 
general  it  stood  firm,  and  called  for  help  on  the  nation. 
The  nation  obeyed  the  call,  rallied  round  the  sovereign, 
and  enabled  him  to  quell  the  disaffected  minority. 

Thus,  from  the  age  of  Henrv  the  Third  to  the  ao-e  of 
Elizabeth,  England  grew  and  flourished  under  a  polity 
which  contained  the  germ  of  our  present  institutions, 
and  which,  though  not  very  exactly  defined,  or  very 
exactly  observed,  was  yet  effectually  prevented  from 
degenerating  into  despotism,  by  the  awe  in  which  the 
governors  stood  of  the  spirit  and  strength  of  the  gov- 
erned. 

But  such  a  polity  is  suited  only  to  a  particular  stage 
in  the  progress  of  society.  The  same  causes  which  pro- 
duce a  division  of  labour  in  the  peaceful  arts  must  at 
length  make  war  a  distinct  science  and  a  distinct  trade. 
A  time  arrives  when  the  use  of  arms  begins  to  occupy 


46  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  IGn.  I. 

the  entire  attention  of  a  separate  class.  It  soon  a})pears 
that  peasants  and  burghers,  however  bi'ave,  are  unable 
to  stand  their  ground  against  veteran  soldiers,  whose 
whole  life  is  a  preparation  for  the  day  of  battle,  whose 
nerves  have  been  braced  by  long  familiarity  with  dan- 
ger, and  whose  movements  have  all  the  precision  of 
clockwork.  It  is  found  that  the  defence  of  nations  can 
no  longer  be  safely  entrusted  to  wari'iors  taken  from 
the  plough  or  the  loom  for  a  campaign  of  forty  days.  If 
any  state  forms  a  great  regular  army,  the  bordering 
states  must  imitate  the  example,  or  must  submit  to  a 
foreign  yoke.  But,  where  a  great  regular  army  exists, 
hmited  monarchy,  such  as  it  was  in  the  middle  ages, 
can  exist  no  longer.  The  sovereign  is  at  once  emanci- 
pated from  what  had  been  the  chief  restraint  on  his 
power ;  and  he  inevitably  becomes  absolute,  unless  he 
is  subjected  to  checks  such  as  would  be  superfluous  in 
a  society  where  all  are  soldiers  occasionally,  and  none 
permanently. 

With  the  danger  came  also  the  means  of  escape.  In 
Limited  mon-  the  monarchies  of  the  middle  ages  the  power 
middle  ages    of  the  sword  belonged  to  the  prince,  but  the 

generally  r>i  ii  ii 

turned  into  powcr  ot  the  pursc  belonged  to  the  nation  ; 
monarchies,  and  the  progrcss  of  civilisation,  as  it  made  the 
sword  of  the  prince  more  and  more  formidable  to  the 
nation,  made  the  purse  of  the  nation  more  and  more 
necessary  to  the  prince.  His  hereditary  revenues  would 
no  longer  suffice,  even  for  the  expenses  of  civil  goveini- 
ment.  It  was  utterly  impossible  that,  without  a  regu- 
lar and  extensive  system  of  taxation,  he  could  keep  in 
constant  efficiency  a  great  body  of  disciplined  troops. 
The  policy  which  the  parliamentary  assemblies  of 
Europe  ought  to  have  adopted  was  to  take  their  stand 
firmly  on  their  constitutional  right  to  give  or  withhold 


ch.  l]  before  the  uestoration.  47 

money,  and  resolutely  to  refuse  funds  for  the  support 
of  armies,  till  ample  securities  had  been  provided  against 
despotism. 

This  wise  policy  was  followed  in  our  country  alone. 
In  the  neiffhbourins;  kingdoms  great  military  establish- 
ments  were  formed  ;  no  new  safeguards  for  public  lib- 
erty were  devised  ;  and  the  consequence  was,  that  the 
old  parliamentary  institutions  everywhere  ceased  to 
exist.  In  France,  where  they  had  always  been  feeble, 
they  languished,  and  at  length  died  of  mere  weakness. 
In  Sjjain,  where  they  had  been  as  strong  as  in  any  part 
of  Euroj)e,  they  struggled  fiercely  for  life,  but  struggled 
too  late.  The  mechanics  of  Toledo  and  Valladolid 
vainly  defended  the  j)rivileges  of  the  Castilian  Cortes 
against  the  veteran  battalions  of  Charles  the  Fifth. 
As  vainly,  in  the  next  generation,  did  the  citizens  of 
Saragossa  stand  up  against  Philip  the  Second,  for  the 
old  constitution  of  Aragon.  One  after  another,  the 
great  national  councils  of  the  continental  monarchies, 
councils  once  scarcely  less  proud  aiid  powerful  than 
those  which  sate  at  Westminster,  sank  into  utter  insig- 
nificance. If  they  met,  they  met  merely  as  our  Con- 
vocation now  meets,  to  go  through  some  venerable 
forms. 

In  England  events  took  a  different  course.  This  sin- 
gular  felicity  she  owed  chiefly  to  her  insular  j^^  Ent'iidh 
situation.  Before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  l°;:,=;[^i'-L*. 
century  great  military  establishments  were  <^«p"°°- 
indispensable  to  the  dignity,  and  even  to  the  safety,  of 
the  French  and  Castilian  monarchies.  If  either  of  those 
two  powers  had  disarmed,  it  Avoxdd  soon  have  been 
compelled  to  submit  to  the  dictation  of  the  other.  But 
England,  protected  by  the  sea  against  invasion,  and 
rarely  engaged  in  warlike  operations  on  the  Continent. 


i8 


HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 


was  not,  as  yet,  under  the  necessity  of  employing  reg- 
ular troops.  The  sixteenth  century,  the  seventeenth 
century,  found  her  still  witliout  a  standing  army.  At 
the  commencement  of  the  seventeenth  century  political 
science  had  made  considerable  progress.  The  fate  of 
the  Spanish  Cortes  and  of  the  French  States  General, 
had  given  solemn  warning  to  our  Parliaments  ;  and  our 
Parliaments,  fully  aware  of  the  nature  and  magnitude 
of  the  danger,  adopted,  in  good  time,  a  system  of  tactics 
which,  after  a  contest  protracted  through  three  genera- 
tions, was  at  length  successful. 

Almost  every  writer  who  has  treated  of  that  contest 
has  been  desirous  to  show  that  his  own  party  was  the 
party  which  was  struggling  to  preserve  the  old  consti- 
tution unaltered.     The  truth  however  is  that  the  old 
constitution  could  not  be  preserved  unaltered.     A  law, 
beyond  the  control  of  human  wisdom,  had  decreed  that 
there  should  no  longer  be  governments  of  that  peculiar 
class  which,  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries, 
had  been  common  throughout  Europe.     The  question, 
therefore,  was  not  whether  our  polity  should  undergo 
a  change,  but  Avhat  the  nature  of  the  change  should  be. 
The  introduction  of  a  new  and  mighty  force  had  dis- 
turbed the  old  equilibrium,  and  had  turned  one  limited 
monarchy  after   another   into  an   absolute   monarchy. 
What  had  happened  elsewhere  would  assuredly  have 
happened  here,  unless  the  balance  had  been  redressed 
by  a  great  transfer  of  power  fi-om  the  crown  to  the  par- 
liament.    Our  princes  were  about  to  have  at  their  com- 
mand means   of  coercion   such   as  no   Plantao-enet  or 
Tudor  had  ever  possessed.     They  must  inevitably  have 
become  despots,  unless  they  had  been,  at  the  same  time, 
placed   under  restraints  to   wliich   no  Plantagenet   or 
Tudor  had  ever  been  subject. 


Ch.  1.]  BEFORE    TUE   KESTORATION.  49 

It  seems  certain,  therefore,  that,  had  none  but  polit- 
ical causes  been  at  work,  the  seventeenth  century 
would  not  have  passed  away  without  a  fierce  conflict 
between  our  Kings  and  their  Parliaments.  But  other 
causes  of  perhaps  greater  potency  contributed  to  pro- 
duce the  same  effect.     While  the  government  The  Refor- 

n     1         n^      I  •       •        1  •    1  ■  1       Diation  and 

01  the  iudors  was  ni  its  hisuest  vio;our  took  its  effects. 
place  an  event  which  has  coloured  the  destinies  of  all 
Christian  nations,  and  in  an  especial  manner  the  des- 
tinies of  England.  Twice  during  the  middle  ages  the 
mind  of  Europe  had  risen  up  against  the  domination  of 
Rome.  The  first  insurrection  broke  out  in  the  south 
of  France.  The  energy  of  Innocent  the  Third,  the 
zeal  of  the  young  orders  of  Francis  and  Dominic,  and 
the  ferocity  of  the  Crusaders  whom  the  priesthood  let 
loose  on  an  unwarlike  populati(.)n,  crushed  the  Albigen- 
sian  churches.  The  second  reformation  had  its  origin 
in  England  and  spread  to  Bohemia.  The  Council  of 
Constance,  by  removing  some  ecclesiastical  disorders 
which  had  given  scandal  to  Christendom,  and  the 
princes  of  Europe,  by  unsparingly  using  fire  and  sword 
against  the  heretics,  succeeded  in  ax'resting  and  turning 
back  the  movement.  Nor  is  this  much  to  be  lamented. 
The  sympathies  of  a  Protestant,  it  is  true,  will  natu- 
rally be  on  the  side  of  the  Albigensians  and  of  the  Lol- 
lards. Yet  an  enlightened  and  temperate  Protestant 
will  pei-haps  be  disposed  to  doubt  whether  the  success, 
either  of  the  Albigensians  or  of  the  Lollards,  would,  on 
the  whole,  have  promoted  the  happiness  and  virtue  of 
mankind.  Corru})t  as  the  Church  of  Rome  was,  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that,  if  that  Church  had  been 
overthrown  in  the  twelfth  or  even  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  the  vacant  space  would  have  been  occupied 
by  some  system  more  corrupt  still.     There  was  then, 

VOL.  I  4 


50  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

througli  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  very  little  knowl- 
edge, and  tliat  little  was  confined  to  the  clergy.  Not 
one  man  in  five  hundred  could  have  spelled  his  way 
through  a  psalm.  Books  were  few  and  costly.  The 
art  of  printing  M'as  unknown.  Copies  of  the  Bible,  in- 
ferior in  beauty  and  clearness  to  those  which  every 
cottager  may  now  command,  sold  for  prices  which  many 
priests  could  not  afford  to  give.  It  was  obviously  im- 
possible that  the  laity  should  search  the  Scriptures  for 
themselves.  It  is  pi'obable  therefore,  that,  as  soon  as 
they  had  put  off  one  spiritual  yoke,  they  would  have 
put  on  another,  and  that  the  power  lately  exercised  by 
the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  Rome  would  have  jDassed 
to  a  far  worse  class  of  teachers.  The  sixteenth  century 
was  comparatively  a  time  of  light.  Yet  even  in  the 
sixteenth  century  a  considerable  number  of  those  wlio 
quitted  the  old  religion  followed  the  first  confident  and 
])lausible  guide  who  offered  himself,  and  were  soon  led 
into  errors  far  more  serious  than  those  which  they  had 
renounced.  ,  Thus  Matthias  and  Kniperdoling,  apostles 
of  lust,  robbery,  and  murder,  were  able  for  a  time  to 
rule  great  cities.  In  a  darker  age  such  false  prophets 
might  have  founded  empires  ;  and  Chnstianity  might 
have  been  distorted  into  a  cruel  and  licentious  super- 
stition, more  noxious,  not  only  than  Popery,  but  even 
than  Islamism. 

About  a  hundred  years  after  the  rising  of  the  Council 
of  Constance,  that  great  change  emphatically  called  the 
Reformation  began.  The  fulness  of  time  was  now 
come.  The  clergv  were  no  lono;er  the  sole  or  the  chief 
depositories  of  knowledge.  The  invention  of  printing 
had  furnished  the  assailants  of  the  Church  with  a 
mighty  weapon  which  had  been  wanting  to  their  pred- 
ecessors.    The  study  of  the  ancient  writers,  tlie  rapid 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  61 

development  of  the  powers  of  the  modern  languages, 
the  unprecedented  activity  which  was  displayed  in 
every  department  of  literature,  the  political  state  of 
Europe,  the  vices  of  the  Roman  court,  the  exactions 
of  the  lioman  chancery,  the  jealousy  with  which  the 
wealth  and  privileges  of  the  clergy  were  naturally  re- 
garded by  laymen,  the  jealousy  with  which  the  Italian 
ascendency  w^as  naturally  regarded  by  men  born  on  our 
side  of  the  Alps,  all  these  things  gave  to  the  teachers 
of  the  new  theology  an  advantage  which  they  perfectly 
understood  how  to  use. 

Those  who  hold  that  the  influence  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  in  the  dark  ages  was,  on  the  whole,  beneficial  to 
mankind  may  yet  with  perfect  consistency  regard  the 
Reformation  as  an  inestimable  blessing.  The  leading 
strings,  which  preserve  and  uphold  the  infant,  would 
impede  the  full  grown  man.  And  so  the  very  means 
by  which  the  human  mind  is,  in  one  stage  of  its  prog- 
ress, supported  and  propelled,  may,  in  another  stage, 
be  mere  hindrances.  There  is  a  point  in  the  life  both 
of  an  individual  and  of  a  society,  at  which  submission 
and  faith,  such  as  at  a  later  period  would  be  justly 
called  servility  and  credulity,  are  usefol  qualities.  The 
child  who  teachably  and  undoubtingly  listens  to  the  in- 
structions of  his  elders  is  likely  to  improve  rapidly. 
But  the  man  who  should  receive  with  childlike  docility 
every  assertion  and  dogma  uttered  by  another  man  no 
wiser  than  himself  would  become  contemptible.  It  is 
the  same  with  communities.  The  childhood  of  the 
European  nations  was  passed  under  the  tutelage  of  the 
clergy.  The  ascendency  of  the  sacerdotal  order  was 
long  the  ascendency  which  naturally  and  properly  be- 
longs to  intellectual  superiority.  The  priests,  with  all 
their  faults,  wen;  by  far  the  wisest  portion  of  society. 


52  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch,  I 

It  was,  therefore,  on  the  whole,  good  that  they  should 
be  respected  and  obeyed.  The  encroachments  of  the 
ecclesiastical  power  on  the  province  of  the  civil  power 
produced  much  more  happiness  than  misery,  while  the 
ecclesiastical  power  was  in  the  hands  of  the  only  class 
that  had  studied  history,  philosophy,  and  public  law, 
and  while  the  civil  power  was  in  the  hands  of  savage 
chiefs,  who  could  not  read  their  own  grants  and  edicts. 
But  a  change  took  place.  Knowledge  gradually  spread 
among  laymen.  At  the  commencement  of  the  six- 
teenth century  many  of  them  were  in  every  intellectual 
attainment  fully  equal  to  the  most  enlightened  of  their 
spiritual  pastors.  Thenceforward  that  dominion,  which, 
during  the  dark  ages,  had  been,  in  spite  of  many  abuses, 
a  legitimate  and  a  salutary  guardianship,  became  an 
unjust  and  noxious  tyranny. 

From  the  time  when  the  barbarians  overran  the 
Western  Empire  to  the  time  of  the  revival  of  letters, 
the  influence  of  the  Church  of  Rome  had  been  gener- 
ally favourable  to  science,  to  civilisation,  and  to  good 
government.  But  during  the  last  three  centuries,  to 
stunt  the  growth  of  the  human  mind  has  been  her  chief 
object.  Throughout  Christendom,  whatever  advance 
has  been  made  in  knowledge,  in  freedom,  in  wealth, 
and  in  the  arts  of  life,  has  been  made  in  spite  of  her, 
and  has  everywhere  been  in  inverse  proportion  to  her 
power.  The  loveliest  and  most  fertile  provinces  of 
Europe  have,  under  her  rule,  been  sunk  in  poverty,  in 
political  servitude,  and  in  intellectual  torpor,  while 
Protestant  countries,  once  proverbial  for  sterility  anfl 
barbarism,  have  been  turned  by  skill  and  industry  into 
gardens,  and  can  boast  of  a  long  list  of  heroes  and 
statesmen,  philosophers  and  poets.  Whoever,  knowing 
what  Italy  and  Scotland  naturally  are,  and  what,  four 


Oh.  I.]  BEFORE  THE  RESTORATION.  63 

hundred  years  ago,  tliey  actually  were,  shall  now  com- 
pare the  country  round  Rome  with  the  country  round 
Edinburgh,  will  be  able  to  form  some  judgment  as  to 
the  tendency  of  Papal  domination.  The  descent  of 
Spain,  once  the  first  among  monarchies,  to  the  lowest 
depths  of  degradation,  the  elevation  of  Holland,  in  s])ite 
of  many  natural  disadvantages,  to  a  position  such  as  no 
commonwealth  so  small  has  ever  reached,  teach  the 
same  lesson.  Whoever  passes  in  Germany  from  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  to  a  Protestant  principality,  in  Switzer- 
land from  a  Roman  Catholic  to  a  Protestant  canton,  in 
Ireland  from  a  Roman  Catholic  to  a  Protestant  county, 
finds  that  he  has  passed  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  grade 
of  civilisation.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  the 
same  law  prevails.  The  Pr-Otestants  of  the  United 
States  have  left  far  behind  them  the  Roman  Catholics 
of  Mexico,  Peru,  and  Brazil.  The  Roman  Catholics 
of  Lower  Canada  remain  inert,  while  the  whole  conti- 
nent round  them  is  in  a  ferment  with  Protestant  activity 
and  enterprise.  The  French  have  doubtless  shown  an 
energy  and  an  intelligence  which,  even  when  misdi- 
rected, have  justly  entitled  them  to  be  called  a  great 
people.  But  this  apparent  exception,  when  examined, 
will  be  found  to  confirm  the  rule  ;  for  in  no  country 
that  is  called  Roman  Catholic  has  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  during  several  generations,  possessed  so  little 
authority  as  in  France. 

It  is  difiicult  to  say  whether  Enoland  owes  more  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  religion  or  to  the  Reformation. 
For  the  amalgamation  of  races  and  for  the  abolition  of 
villenage,  she  is  chiefly  indebted  to  the  influence  which 
the  priesthood  in  the  middle  ages  exercised  over  the 
laity.  For  political  and  intellectual  freedom,  and  for 
all  the  blessings  which  political  and  intellectual  free- 


64  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I 

dom  have  brought  in  their  train,  she  is  chiefly  indebted 
to  the  great  rebelhon  of  the  laity  against  the  priesthood. 
The  sti-uggle  between  the  old  and  the  new  theology 
in   our  country  was  long,   and  the   event  sometimes 
seemed  doubtful.     There   were  two   extreme   parties, 
prepared  to  act  with  violence  or  to  suffer  with  stubborn 
resolution.     Between  them  lay,  during  a  conjiderable 
time,  a  middle  party,  which  blended,  very  illogically, 
but  by  no  means  unnaturally,   lessons  learned  in  the 
nursery  with  the  sermons  of  the  modern  evangelists, 
and,  while  clinging  with  fondness  to  old  observances, 
yet  detested  abuses  with  which  those  observances  were 
closely  connected.     Men  in  such  a  frame  of  mind  were 
w^illing  to   obey,  almost  with  thankfulness,  the   dicta- 
tion of  an  able  ruler  who  spared  them  the  trouble  of 
judging  for  themselves,  and,  raising  a  firm  and  com- 
manding voice  above  the  uproar  of  controversy,  told 
them  how  to  worship  and  what  to  believe.     It  is  not 
strano-e,  therefore,  that  the  Tudors  should  have  been 
able  to  exercise  a  great  influence  on  ecclesiastical  af- 
fairs ;  nor  is  it  strange  that  their  influence  should,  for 
the  most  part,  have  been  exercised  with  a  view  to  their 
own  interest. 

Henry  the  Eighth  attempted  to  constitute  an  Angli- 
can Chui'ch  differing  from  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
on  the  point  of  the  supremacy,  and  on  that  point  alone. 
His  success  in  this  attempt  was  extraordinary.  The 
force  of  his  character,  the  singularly  favourable  situation 
in  which  he  stood  with  respect  to  foreign  powers,  the 
immense  wealth  which  the  spohation  of  the  abbeys 
placed  at  his  disposal,  and  the  support  of  that  class 
whicli  still  halted  between  two  opinions,  enabled  him 
to  bid  defiance  to  both  the  extreme  parties,  to  burn  as 
heretics  those  who  avowed  the  tenets  of  the  Reformers, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  65 

and  to  liang  as  traitors  those  who  owned  the  author- 
ity of  tlie  Pope.  But  Henry's  system  died  with  him. 
Had  liis  life  been  prolonoed,  he  would  have  found  it 
dithcidt  to  maintain  a  position  assailed  with  equal  fury 
by  all  who  were  zealous  either  for  the  new  or  for  the 
old  opijiions.  The  ministers  wlio  held  the  royal  pre- 
rogatives in  trust  for  his  infant  son  could  not  ventui-e 
to  persist  in  so  hazardous  a  policy ;  nor  could  Ehzabeth 
Venture  to  return  to  it.  It  was  necessary  to  make  a 
choice.  The  government  must  either  submit  to  Rome, 
or  nuist  obtain  the  aid  of  the  Protestants.  The  irov- 
ernment  and  the  Protestants  had  only  one  thiwy  in 
common,  hatred  of  the  Papal  power.  The  English 
reformers  were  eager  to  go  a.s  far  as  tlieir  brethren  on 
tlie  Continent.  They  unanimously  condemned  as  An- 
tichristian  numerous  dogmas  and  practices  to  which 
Henry  had  stubbornly  adhered,  and  which  Elizabeth 
reluctantlv  abandoned.  Many  felt  a  strono-  repno-nance 
even  to  things  indifterent  which  had  formed  part  of  the 
j)()lity  or  ritual  of  the  mystical  Babylon.  Thus  Bishop 
Hooper,  wlio  died  manfully  at  Gloucester  for  his  re- 
ligion, long  refused  to  wear  the  episcopal  vestments. 
Bislioj)  Ridley,  a  martyr  of  still  greater  renown,  pulled 
down  the  ancient  altars  of  his  diocese,  and  ordered  the 
Eucharist  to  be  administered  in  the  middle  of  churches, 
at  tables  Avhich  the  Papists  irreverently  termed  oyster 
boards.  Bishop  Jewel  pronounced  the  clerical  garb  to 
be  a  stage  dress,  a  fool's  coat,  a  relique  of  the  Amorites, 
and  promised  that  he  would  spare  no  labour  to  extirpate 
such  degrading  absurdities.  Archbishop  Grindal  long 
hesitated  about  accepting  a  mitre  from  dishke  of  what 
Ik-  regarded  as  thi>  mununery  of  ccmsecratioji.  Bislioj; 
Paikhurst  uttered  a  fervent  ])rayer  that  the  Church 
of  England  would  propose  to  herself  the  Church  of  Zu« 


56  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [('n.  L 

rich  as  the  absolute  pattern  of  a  Christian  community. 
Bishop  Ponet  was  of  opinion  that  the  word  Bishop 
should  be  abandoned  to  the  Papists,  and  tliat  the  chief 
officers  of  the  purified  church  should  be  called  Super- 
intendents. When  it  is  considered  that  none  of  these 
prelates  belonged  to  the  extreme  section  of  the  Protes- 
tant party,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that,  if  the  general 
sense  of  that  party  had  been  followed,  the  work  of  re- 
form would  have  been  carried  on  as  unsparingly  in 
England  as  in  Scotland. 

But,  as  the  government  needed  the  support  of  the 
Origin  of  the  Protcstauts,  SO  the  Protestants  needed  the  pro- 

Cluirch  of  .  ,  ^ 

England.  tcctiou  of  the  government.  Much  was  there- 
fore given  up  on  both  sides  ;  an  union  was  effected  ;  and 
the  fruit  of  that  union  was  the  Church  of  England. 

To  the  peculiarities  of  this  great  institution,  and  to 
the  strong  passions  which  it  has  called  forth  in  the 
minds  both  of  friends  and  of  enemies,  are  to  be  attrib- 
uted many  of  the  most  important  events  which  have, 
since  the  Reformation,  taken  place  in  our  country ;  nor 
can  the  secular  history  of  England  be  at  all  understood 
by  us,  unless  we  study  it  in  constant  connection  with 
the  history  of  her  ecclesiastical  polity. 

The  man  who  took  the  chief  part  in  settling  the  con- 
ditions of  the  alliance  which  produced  the  Anglican 
Church  was  Archbishop  Cranmer.  He  was  the  repre- 
sentative of  both  the  parties  which,  at  that  time,  needed 
each  other's  assistance.  He  was  at  once  a  divine  and 
a  courtier.  In  his  character  of  divine  he  was  perfectly 
ready  to  go  as  far  in  the  way  of  change  as  any  Swiss  or 
Scottish  reformer.  In  his  character  of  coartier  he  was 
desirous  to  preserve  that  organization  which  had,  dur- 
mg  many  ages,  admirably  served  the  purposes  of  the 
Bishops  of  Rome,  and  might  be  expected  now  to  serve 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  57 

equally  well  the  purposes  of  the  English  Kings  and  of 
their  ministers.  His  temper  and  his  understanding 
eminently  fitted  him  to  act  as  mediator.  Saintly  in  his 
professions,  unscrupulous  in  his  dealings,  zealous  for 
nothing,  bold  in  speculation,  a  coward  and  a  timeserver 
in  action,  a  placable  enemy  and  a  lukewarm  friend,  he 
was  in  every  way  qualified  to  arrange  the  terms  of  the 
coalition  between  the  religious  and  the  worldly  enemies 
of  Popery. 

To  this  day  the  constitution,  the  doctrines,  and  the 
services  of  the  Church,  retain  the  visible  Her  peculiar 
marks  of  the  compromise  from  which  she  "  ^^^'^ "' 
sj)rang.  She  occupies  a  middle  position  between  the 
Churches  of  Rome  and  Geneva.  Her  doctrinal  con- 
fessions and  discourses,  composed  by  Protestants,  set 
forth  principles  of  theology  in  wliich  Calvin  or  Knox 
would  have  found  scarcely  a  word  to  disapprove.  Her 
prayers  and  thanksgivings,  derived  from  the  ancient 
Breviaries,  are  very  generally  such  that  Cardinal 
Fisher  or  Cardinal  Pole  mifdit  have  heartily  joined  in 
them.  A  controversialist  who  puts  an  Arminian  sense 
on  her  Articles  and  Homilies  will  be  pronounced  by 
candid  men  to  be  as  unreasonable  as  a  controversialist 
who  denies  that  the  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration 
can  be  discovered  in  her  Liturgy. 

The  Church  of  Rome  held  that  episcopacy  was  of 
divine  institution,  and  that  certain  supernatural  graces 
of  a  high  order  had  been  transmitted  by  the  imposition 
of  hands  through  fifty  generations,  from  the  Eleven 
who  received  their  commission  on  the  Galilean  momit, 
to  the  bisliops  who  met  at  Trent.  A  large  body  of 
Protestants,  on  the  other  hand,  regarded  prelacy  as 
positively  unlawful,  and  persuaded  themselves  that  they 
f^onnd  a  A^cry  different  form  of  ecclesiasticaJ  government 


68  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

prescribed  in  Scripture.  The  founders  of  the  Angli- 
can Church  took  a  middle  course.  They  retained  epis- 
copacy ;  but  they  did  not  declare  it  to  be  an  institution 
essential  to  the  welfare  of  a  Christian  society,  or  to  the 
efficacy  of  tlie  sacraments.  Cranmer,  indeed,  on  one 
important  occasion,  plainly  avowed  his  conviction  that, 
in  the  primitive  times,  there  was  no  distinction  between 
bishops  and  priests,  and  that  the  laying  on  of  hands  was 
altogether  superfluous. 

Among  the  Presbyterians,  the  conduct  of  public  wor- 
ship is,  to  a  great  extent,  left  to  the  minister.  Their 
prayers,  therefore,  are  not  exactly  the  same  in  any  two 
assemblies  on  the  same  day,  or  on  any  two  days  in  the 
same  assembly.  In  one  parish  they  are  fervent,  elo- 
quent, and  full  of  meaning.  In  the  next  parish  they 
may  be  languid  or  absurd.  The  priests  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  have,  during  many 
generations,  daily  chaunted  the  same  ancient  confes- 
sions, sup])lications,  and  thanksgivings,  in  India  and 
Lithuania,  in  Ireland  and  Peru.  The  service,  being  in 
a  dead  language,  is  intelligible  only  to  the  learned ;  and 
the  great  majority  of  the  congregation  may  be  said  to 
assist  as  spectators  rather  than  as  auditors.  Here, 
again,  the  Church  of  England  took  a  middle  course. 
She  copied  the  Roman  Catholic  forms  of  prayer,  but 
translated  them  into  the  vulgar  tongue,  and  invited  the 
illiterate  multitude  to  join  its  voice  to  that  of  the  min- 
ister. 

In  every  part  of  her  system  the  same  policy  may  be 
traced.  Utterly  rejecting  the  doctrine  of  transubstan- 
tiation,  and  condemning  as  idolatrous  all  adoration  paid 
to  the  sacramental  bread  and  wine,  she  yet,  to  the  dis- 
gust of  the  Puritan,  required  her  children  to  receive 
the  memorials  of  divine  love,  meekly  kneehng  upon 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE   RESTORATION.  69 

their  knees.  Discarding  many  ric-h  vestments  which 
surrounded  the  altars  of  the  ancient  faith,  she  yet  re- 
tained, to  the  liorror  of  weak  minds,  a  rohe  of  white 
Hnen,  typical  of  the  purity  which  belonged  to  her  as  the 
mystical  s])Ouse  of  Christ.  Discarding  a  crowd  of  panto- 
mimic gestures  which,  in  tlie  Roman  Catholic  worship, 
are  substituted  for  intelligible  words,  she  yet  shocked 
many  rigid  Protestants  by  marking  the  infant  just 
s])rinkled  from  the  font  with  the  sign  of  the  cross. 
The  Roman  Catholic  addressed  his  prayers  to  a  mul- 
titude of  Saints,  among  whom  were  numbered  many 
men  of  doubtful,  and  some  of  hateful,  character.  The 
Puritan  refused  the  addition  of  Saint  even  to  the  apostle 
of  the  Gentiles,  and  to  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved. 
The  Church  of  England,  though  she  asked  for  the  in- 
tercession of  no  created  being,  still  set  apart  days  for 
the  commemoration  of  some  who  had  done  and  suffered 
great  things  for  the  faith.  She  retained  confirmation 
and  ordination  as  edifying  rites  ;  but  she  degraded  them 
from  the  rank  of  sacraments.  Shrift  was  no  part  of  her 
system.  Yet  she  gently  invited  the  dying  penitent  to 
confess  his  sins  to  a  divine,  and  empowered  her  min- 
isters to  sooth  the  departing  soul  by  an  absolution, 
which  breathes  the  very  spirit  of  the  old  religion.  In 
genei-al  it  may  be  said,  that  she  appeals  more  to  th(} 
understandinir,  and  less  to  the  senses  and  the  imagi- 
nation,  than  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  that  she  appeals 
less  to  the  understanding,  and  more  to  the  senses  and 
imagination,  than  the  Pi'otestant  Churches  of  Scotland, 
France,  and  Switzerland. 

Nothing,    however,    so    stronfjlv    distinrruished    the 
Church  of  England  from  other  Churches  as   R,.i,,tJon  i„ 
the  relation  in  which  she  stood  to  the  mon-   atood^toThe 
archy.    The  King  was  her  head.    The  limits  '^^°'^'^- 


60  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

of  the  authority  Avliich  he  possessed,  as  such,  were  not 
traced,  and  indeed  have  never  yet  been  traced,  with 
precision.  The  laws  which  declared  him  supreme  in 
ecclesiastical  matters  were  drawn  rudely  and  in  gen- 
eral terms.  If,  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  sense 
of  those  laws,  we  examine  the  books  and  lives  of  those 
who  founded  the  English  Church,  our  perplexity  will 
be  increased.  For  the  founders  of  the  English  Church 
wrote  and  acted  in  an  age  of  violent  intellectual  fermen- 
tation, and  of  constant  action  and  reaction.  They  there- 
fore often  contradicted  each  other,  and  sometimes  con- 
tradicted themselves.  That  the  King  was,  under  Christ, 
sole  head  of  the  Church,  was  a  doctrine  Avhich  they  all 
with  one  voice  affirmed :  but  those  words  had  very 
different  significations  in  different  mouths,  and  in  the 
same  mouth  at  different  conjunctures.  Sometimes  an 
authority  which  would  have  satisfied  Hildebrand  was 
ascribed  to  the  sovereign  :  then  it  dwindled  down  to 
an  authority  little  more  than  that  which  had  been 
claimed  by  many  ancient  English  princes,  who  had 
been  in  constant  communion  with  the  Church  of  Rome. 
What  Henry  and  his  favourite  counsellors  meant,  at  one 
time,  by  the  supremacy,  was  certainly  nothing  less 
than  the  whole  power  of  the  kevs.  The  Kino-  was 
to  be  the  Pope  of  his  kingdom,  the  vicar  of  God,  the 
expositor  of  Catholic  verity,  the  channel  of  sacramental 
graces.  He  arrogated  to  himself  the  right  of  decidino- 
dogmatically  what  was  orthodox  doctrine  and  what 
was  heresy,  of  drawing  up  and  imposing  confessions  of 
faith,  and  of  giving  religious  instruction  to  his  people. 
He  proclaimed  that  all  jurisdiction,  spiritual  as  well  as 
temporal,  was  derived  from  him  alone,  and  that  it  was 
in  his  power  to  confer  episcopal  authority,  and  to  take 
it  away.     He  actually  ordered  his  seal  to  be   ]mt  to 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  61 

commissions  by  which  bishops  were    appointed,   wlio 
were   to  exercise  their  functions   as  his  deputies,  and 
during  his  pleasure.     According  to  this  system,  as  ex- 
pounded by  Cranmer,   the   King  was  the  spiritual  as 
well  as  the  temporal  chief  of  the  nation.     In  both  ca- 
pacities His  Highness  must  have  lieutenants.     As  ho 
appointed  civil  officers   to  keep  his  seal,  to  collect  his 
revenues,  and  to  dispense  justice  in  his  name,  so  he 
appointed  divhies  of  various  ranks  to  preach  the  gospel, 
and  to  administer  the  sacraments.     It  was  unnecessaiy 
that   there   should   be   any  imposition  of  hands.     The 
King  —  such  was  the  opinion  of  Cranmer  given  in  the 
plainest  words  —  might,  in  virtue  of  authority  derived 
from   God,  make    a   priest ;  and    the   priest  so   made 
needed    no  ordination   whatever.     These  opinions  tlie 
Archbishop,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  less  courtly 
divines,  followed  out  to  every  legitimate  consequence. 
He  held  that  his  own  spiritual  functions,  like  the  secular 
functions  of  the  Chancellor  and  Treasurer,  were  at  once 
determined  by  a  demise  of  the  crown.     When  Heniy 
died,  therefore,  the  Primate  and  his    suffragans    took 
Hit  fresh  commissions,  empowering  them  to  ordain  and 
to  govern  the  Church   till   the   new  sovereign  should 
think  fit  to  order  otherwise.     AVhen  it  was   objected 
that  a  power  to  bind  and  to  loose,  altogether  distinct 
from  temporal  ])Ower,  had  been  given  by  our  Lord  to 
his  apostles,  some  theologians  of  this  school  replied  that 
the  power  to  bind  and  to  loose  had  descended,  not  to 
the  clergy,  but  to  the  whole  body  of  Christian  men, 
and  ought  to  be  exercised  by  the  chief  magistrate,  as 
the  representative  of  the  society.     When   it   was  ob- 
jected that  Saint  Paul  had  spoken  of  certain  persons 
vs'hom  the  Holy  Ghost  had  made  overseers  and  shep- 
herds  of  the  faithful,  it  was  answered  that  King  Henry 


62  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  1, 

was  the  very  overseer,  the  very  shepherd,  wh(.'m  the  ■ 

Holy  Ghost  had  appointed,  and  to  whom  the  expres-  1 

sions  of  Saint  Paul  applied.^ 

These  high  j)retensions  gave  scandal  to  Protestants 
as  well  as  to  Catholics  ;  and  the  scandal  was  greatly 
increased  when  the  supremacy,  which  Mary  had  re- 
signed back  to  the  Pope,  was  again  annexed  to  the 
crown,  on  the  accession  of  Elizaheth.  It  seemed  mon- 
strous that  a  woman  should  be  the  chief  bishop  of  a 
Church  in  which  an  apostle  had  forbidden  her  even  to 
let  her  voice  be  heard.  The  Queen,  therefore,  found  it 
necessaiy  expressly  to  disclaim  that  sacerdotal  charac- 
ter which  her  father  had  assumed,  and  which,  accord- 
ing to  Cranmer,  had  been  inseparably  joined,  by  divine 
ordinance,  to  the  regal  function.  When  the  Anglican 
confession  of  faith  was  revised  in  her  reign,  the  suprem- 
acy was  explained  in  a  manner  somewhat  difterent 
from  that  which  had  been  fashionable  at  the  court  of 
Henry.  Cranmer  had  declared,  in  em})hatic  terms, 
that  God  had  immediately  connnitted  to  Christian 
princes  the  whole  cure  of  all  their  subjects,  as  well 
concerning  the  administration  of  God's  word  for  the 
cure  of  souls,  as  concerning  the  administration  of  things 
political.^  The  thirty-seventh  article  of  religion,  framed 
under  Elizabeth,  declares,  in  terms  as  emphatic,  that 
the  ministerinop  of  God's  word  does  not  belong  to 
princes.  The  Queen,  however,  still  had  over  the 
Church  a  visitatorial  power  of  vast  and  undefined  ex- 
tent. She  was  entrusted  bv  Parliament  with  the  office 
of  restraining  and  jDunishing  heresy  and  every  sort  of 
ecclesiastical  abuse,  and  was  permitted  to  delegate  her 

1  See  a  very  curious  paper  which  Stiype  believed  to  be  in  Gardiner's 
handwriting.     Ecclesiastical  Memorials,  Book  I.  Chap.  xvii. 

2  These  are  Cranmer's  own  words.     See  the  Appendix  to  Burnet's  His- 
tory of  tbs  Reformation,  Part  I.  Book  IIL  No.  21.  Question  9. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  63 

authority  to  commissioners.     The  Bisliops  were  little 
more  than  her  ministers.    Rather  tlian  grant  to  the  civil 
magistrate  the  absolute  power  of  nominating  spiritual 
})astors,  the  Church  of  Rome,  in  the  eleventh  century, 
set  all  Europe  on  fire.     Rather  than  grant  to  the  civil 
magistrate  the  absolute  power  of  nominating  spiritual 
pastors,  the  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  in  otu' 
own    time,   resigned  their  livings  by  hundreds.     The 
Church  of  England    had   no   such   scruples.     By  the 
royal  authoi'ity  alone  her  prelates  were  appointed.     By 
the  royal  authority  alone  her  Convocations  were  sum- 
moned, regulated,  prorogued,  and  dissolved.     Without 
the  royal  sanction  her  canons  had  no  force.     One  of 
the  articles  of  her  faith  was  that  without  the  royal  con- 
sent no  ecclesiastical  council  could  lawfully  assemble. 
From  all   her  judicatures  an  appeal    lay,   in   the   last 
resort,  to  the  sovereign,  even  when  the  question  Avas 
whether  an  opinion  ought  to  be  accounted  heretical,  or 
whether  the   administration  of  a  sacrament  had  been 
valid.      Nor    did    the   Church    grudge    this    extensive 
power  to  our  princes.     By  them  she  had  been  called 
into  existence,  nursed,  through  a  feeble  infancy,  guarded 
from  Papists  on  one   side,  and  from  Puritans  on  the 
other,  protected  against  Parliaments  which   bore   her 
no  good  will,  and  avenged  on  literary  assailants  whom 
she  found  it  hard  to  answer.     Thus  gratitude,  hope, 
fear,  connnon   attachments,   common   enmities,  bound 
her  to  the  throne.     All  her  traditions,  nil   her  tastes 
wcire  monarchical.     Loyalty  became  a  jioint  of  profes- 
sional  honoiir  among  her  clergy,  the  ])eculiar  badge 
which  distinguished  them  at  once  from  Calvinists  and 
from    Papists.     Both    the   Calvinists  and  the   Papists, 
widely  as  they   diftered    in    other    respects,   regarded 
with  e.Ntrenie  jealousy  ;ill  encroachments  of  the  tem- 


64  HISTORl    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

poral  power  on  the  domain  of  the  sph-Itual  power. 
Both  Calvinists  and  Papists  maintained  that  subjects 
might  justifiably  draw  the  sword  against  ungodly  rulers. 
In  France  Calvinists  resisted  Charles  the  Ninth  :  Pa- 
pists resisted  Henry  the  Fourth  :  both  Papists  and  Cal- 
vinists resisted  Henry  the  Third.  In  Scotland  Calvin- 
ists led  Mary  captive.  On  the  north  of"  the  Trent 
Papists  took  arms  against  the  English  throne.  The 
Church  of  Encrland  meantime  condemned  both  Calvin- 
ists  and  Papists,  and  loudly  boasted  that  no  duty  was 
more  constantly  or  earnestly  inculcated  by  her  than 
that  of  submission  to  ])rinces. 

The  advantao;es  which  the  crown  derived  from  this 
close  alliance  with  the  Established  Church  were  great ; 
but  they  were  not  without  serious  drawbacks.  The 
compromise  arranged  by  Cranmer  had  from  the  first 
been  considered  by  a  large  body  of  Protestants  as  a 
scheme  for  serving  two  masters,  as  an  attempt  to  unite 
the  worship  of  the  Lord  with  the  worship  of  Baal.  In 
the  days  of  Edward  the  Sixth  the  scruples  of  this  party 
had  repeatedly  thrown  great  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
the  government.  When  Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne, 
these  difficulties  were  much  increased.  Violence  natu- 
rally engenders  violence.  The  spirit  of  Protestantism  was 
therefore  far  fiercer  and  more  intolerant  after  the  cruel- 
The  Puri-  ^^^^  ^^  Mary  than  before  them.  Many  persons 
^^-  -who  were  warmly  attached  to  the  new  opinions 

had,  durinof  the  evil  days,  taken  refuge  in  Switzerland 
and  Germany.  They  had  been  hospitably  received  by 
their  brethren  in  the  faith,  had  sate  at  the  feet  of  the 
great  doctors  of  Strasburg,  Zurich,  and  Geneva,  and 
had  been,  durino;  some  years,  accustomed  to  a  more 
simple  worship,  and  to  a  more  democratical  form  of 
church  government  than  England  had  yet  seen.    These 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  65 

men  returned  to  their  country,  convinced  that  the  re- 
form which  had  been  effected  under  King  Edward  had 
been  far  less  searching  and  extensive  than  the  interests 
of  pure  religion  required.  But  it  was  in  vain  that 
they  attempted  to  obtain  any  concession  from  Eliza- 
beth. Indeed  her  system,  wherever  it  differed  from 
lier  brother's,  seemed  to  them  to  differ  for  the  worse. 
Tliey  were  little  disposed  to  submit,  in  matters  of 
faith,  to  any  human  authority.  They  had  recently,  in 
reliance  on  their  own  interpretation  of  Scripture,  risen 
up  against  a  Church  strong  in  immemorial  antiquity 
and  catholic  consent.  It  was  by  no  common  exertion 
of  intellectual  energy  that  they  had  thrown  off"  the 
yoke  of  that  gorgeous  and  imperial  superstition  ;  and 
it  was  vain  to  expect  that,  immediately  after  such  an 
emanci])ation,  they  would  patiently  submit  to  a  new 
spiritual  tyranny.  Long  accustomed,  when  the  priest 
lifted  up  the  host,  to  bow  down  with  their  faces  to  the 
earth,  as  before  a  present  God,  they  had  learned  to 
treat  the  mass  as  an  idolatrous  mummery.  Lono;  ac- 
customed  to  regard  the  Pope  as  the  successor  of  the 
chief  of  the  apostles,  as  the  bearer  of  the  keys  of 
earth  and  heaven,  thev  had  learned  to  reirard  him  a? 
the  Beast,  the  Antichrist,  the  Man  of  Sin.  It  was 
not  to  be  expected  that  they  would  immediately  trans- 
fer to  an  upstart  authority  tlie  homage  which  they  had 
withdrawn  from  the  Vatican  ;  that  tliey  Avould  submit 
their  private  judgment  to  the  authority  of  a  Church 
founded  on  private  judgment  alone ;  that  they  would 
be  afraid  to  dissent  from  teachers  who  themselves  dis- 
sented from  what  had  lately  been  the  universal  faith 
of  western  Christendom.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  t1i'3 
indio;nation  which  must  have  been  felt  by  bold  and 
inquisitive  spirits,  glorying  in  newly  acquired  freedom, 

vol..  I.  0 


66  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

when  an  institution  younger  by  many  years  than  them- 
selves, an  institution  wliich  had,  under  their  own  eyes, 
gradually  received  its  form  from  the  passions  and  in- 
terests of  a  court,  began  to  mimic  the  lofty  style  of 
Rome. 

Since  these  men  could  not  be  convinced,  it  was  de- 
termined tliat  they  should  be  persecuted.  Persecution 
produced  its  natural  eifects  on  them.  It  found  them 
Their  a  scct :    it  made   them  a  faction.     To  their 

spirit.  hatred  of  the  Chm-ch  was  now  added  hatred 

of  the  crown.  The  two  sentiments  were  intermingled ; 
and  each  embittered  the  other.  The  opinions  of  the 
Puritan  concerning  the  relation  of  ruler  and  subject 
were  widely  different  from  those  whicli  were  incul- 
cated in  the  Homilies.  His  favourite  divines  had,  both 
by  precept  and  by  example,  encouraged  resistance  to 
tyrants  and  persecutors.  His  fellow  Calvinists  in 
France,  in  Holland,  and  in  Scotland,  were  in  arms 
against  idolatrous  and  cruel  princes.  His  notions,  too, 
respecting  the  government  of  the  state  took  a  tinge 
fi'om  his  notions  respecting  the  government  of  the 
Church.  Some  of  the  sarcasms  which  were  popularly 
thrown  on  episcopacy  might,  without  much  diiticulty, 
be  turned  against  royalty  ;  and  many  of  the  arguments 
which  were  used  to  prove  that  spiritual  power  was  best 
lodo-ed  in  a  synod  seemed  to  lead  to  the  conclusion  that 
temporal  power  was  best  lodged  in  a  parliament. 

Thus,  as  the  priest  of  the  Established  Church  was, 
from  interest,  from  principle,  and  from  passion,  zealous 
for  the  royal  pi^erogatives,  the  Puritan  was,  from  inter- 
est, from  princi})le,  and  from  passion,  hostile  to  them. 
Tlie  power  of  the  discontented  sectaries  was  great. 
Thcv  were  found  in  every  rank  ;  but  they  were 
stronwst  among  the  mercantile  classes  in  the  towns, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  67 

and  among  the  small  jTropi'ietors  in  the  countiy.  Early 
in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  they  began  to  return  a  ma- 
jority of  the  House  of  Commons.  And  doubtless,  had 
our  ancestors  been  then  at  liberty  to  fix  their  ^^  system- 
attention  entirely  on  domestic  questions,  the  u'e^ii^fr^"' 
strife  between  the  crown  and  the  Parliament  oiJj!r,^j't°" 
would  instantly  have  commenced.  But  that  „'ent°oT'^'*' 
was  no  season  for  internal  dissensions.  It  ^''^'''•^t'l- 
might,  indeed,  well  be  doubted,  whether  the  firmest 
union  amono;  all  the  orders  of  the  state  could  avert  the 
common  danger  by  which  all  were  threatened.  Roman 
Catholic  Europe  and  reformed  Europe  were  struggling 
for  death  or  life.  France,  divided  against  herself,  had, 
for  a  time,  ceased  to  be  of  any  account  in  Christendom. 
The  En<rlish  government  was  at  the  head  of  tlie  Prot- 
estant  interest,  and,  while  persecuting  Presbyterians 
at  home,  extended  a  powerful  protection  to  Presby- 
terian Churches  abroad.  At  the  head  of  the  opposite 
party  was  tlie  mightiest  prince  of  the  age,  a  prince 
who  ruled  Spain,  Portugal,  Italy,  the  Netherlands,  the 
East  and  the  West  Indies,  whose  armies  repeatedly 
marched  to  Paris,  and  whose  fleets  kept  the  coasts  of 
Devonshire  and  Sussex  in  alarm.  It  lonix  seemed 
probable  tliat  Englislimen  would  have  to  fight  des- 
perately on  EngUsh  ground  for  their  religion  and  inde- 
pendence. Nor  were  they  ever  for  a  moment  free 
from  apprehensions  of  some  great  treason  at  home. 
For  in  that  ag(>  it  had  become  a  point  of  conscience 
and  of  honour  with  many  men  of  generous  natures  to 
sacrifice  their  country  to  their  rehgion.  A  succession 
of  dark  jilots,  formed  by  Roman  Catholics  against  the 
life  of  tlie  Queen  and  the  existence  of  tlie  nation,  ke[)t 
society  in  constant  alarm.  Wliatever  might  be  the 
faults  of  Eliziibeth,  it  was  i)lain  that,  to  speak  humanly, 


68  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I 

the  fate  of  the  reahn  and  of  all  reformed  Churches 
was  staked  on  the  securitj  of  her  person  and  on  the 
success  of  her  administration.  To  sti'eno-then  her  hands 
was,  therefore,  the  first  duty  of  a  patriot  and  a  Prot- 
estant ;  and  that  duty  was  well  performed.  The  Puri- 
tans, even  in  the  depths  of  the  prisons  to  which  she  had 
sent  them,  prayed,  and  with  no  simulated  fervour,  that 
she  might  be  kept  from  the  dagger  of  the  assassin, 
that  rebellion  might  be  put  down  under  her  feet,  and 
that  her  arms  might  be  victorious  by  sea  and  land. 
One  of  the  most  stubborn  of  the  stubborn  sect,  imme- 
diately after  his  hand  had  been  lopped  off  for  an  offence 
into  which  he  had  been  hurried  by  his  intemperate  zeal, 
waved  his  hat  Avith  the  hand  which  was  still  left  him, 
and  shouted  "  God  save  the  Queen  ! "  The  sentiment 
with  which  these  men  regarded  her  has  descended 
to  their  posterity.  The  Nonconformists,  rigorously  as 
she  treated  them,  have,  as  a  body,  always  venerated 
her  memory.-^ 

During  the  greater  part  of  her  reign,  therefore,  the 
Puritans  in  the  House  of  Commons,  though  sometimes 
mutinous,  felt  no  disposition  to  ari'ay  themselves  in 
systematic  opposition  to  the  government.  But,  when 
the  defeat  of  the  Armada,  the  successful  resistance  of 
the  United  Provinces  to  the  Spanish  power,  the  firm 
establishment  of  Henry  the  Fourth  on  the  throne  of 
France,  and  the  death  of  Philip  the  Second,  had  se- 

1  The  Puritan  historian,  Neal,  after  censuring  the  cruelty  with  which  she 
treated  the  sect  to  which  he  belonged,  conehides  thus:  "However,  not- 
withstanding all  these  blemishes.  Queen  Elizabeth  stands  upon'reoord  as  a 
wise  and  politic  princess,  for  delivering  her  kingdom  from  the  difficulties 
in  which  it  was  involved  at  her  accession,  for  preserving  the  Protestant 
reformation  against  the  potent  attempts  of  the  Pope,  the  Emperor,  and 
King  of  Spain  abroad,  and  the  Queen  of  Scots  and  her  Popish  sulyects 
at  home.  .  .  .  She  was  the  glory  of  the  age  in  which  she  lived,  and  will  ba 
the  admiration  of  posterity.'" —  Hi.story  of  the  Puritans,  Part  I.  Chap.  viii. 


I 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE  EESTORATION.  SO' 

cured  the  State  and  the  Church  against  all  danger 
from  abroad,  an  obstinate  struggle,  destined  to  last 
during  several  generations,  instantly  began  at  home. 
It  was  in  the  Parliament  of  IGOl  that  the  opposi- 
tion   which    had,    during   forty    years,    been   Question 

111-  of  the 

silently  gathering  and  husbandmg  strengtli,   monopolies. 
fouglit  its   first  great  battle  and  won  its  first  victory. 
The  ground  was  well  chosen.     The  English  sovereigns 
had  always  been  entrusted  with  the  supreme  direction 
of  commercial  police.      It  was  their  undoubted  pre- 
roirative  to  regulate  coin,  weights,  and  measures,  and 
to  appoint  fairs,  markets,  and  ports.     The  Ime  which 
bounded    their   authority    over   trade    had,    as    usual, 
been  but    loosely  drawn.      They   therefore,  as   usual, 
encroached  on  the  province  which  rightfully  belonged 
to  tlio  legislature.      The  encroachment  was,  as  usual, 
patiently  borne,  till  it  became  serious.     But  at  length 
the  Queen  took  upon  herself  to  grant  patents  of  mo- 
nopoly by  scores.     There  was  scarcely  a  family  in  the 
realm  which  did  not  feel  itself  aggrieved  by  the  oppres- 
sion and  extortion  which  this  abuse  naturally  caused. 
Iron,   oil,  vinegar,  coal,   saltpetre,   lead,   starch,  yarn, 
skins,  leather,  glass,  could  be  bought  only  at  exorbitant 
prices.     The  House  of  Commons  met  in  an  angry  and 
determined  mood.    It  was  in  vain  that  a  courtly  minor- 
ity blamed  the  Speaker  for  suffering  the  acts  of  the 
Queen's  Highness  to  be  called  in  question.    The  lan- 
guage- of  the  discontented  party  Avas  high  and  menac- 
ing, and  was  echoed  by  the  voice  of  the  whole  nation. 
The  coach  of  the  chief  minister  of  the  crown  was  sur- 
rounded  by  an   indignant   populace,  who   cursed   the 
monopolies,  and  exclaimed  that  the  prerogative  should 
jiot  be  suffered  to  touch  the  old  liberties  of  England. 
There  seemed  for  a  moment  to  be  some  danger  that 


70  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I 

the  long  and  glorious  reign  of  Elizabeth  would  have  a 
shameful  and  disastrous  end.  She,  however,  with  ad- 
mirable judgment  and  temper,  dechned  tiie  contest,  put 
hei'self  at  the  head  of  the  reforming  party,  redressed 
the  grievance,  thanked  the  Conmions,  in  touching  and 
dignified  language,  for  their  tender  care  of  the  general 
weal,  brought  back  to  herself  the  hearts  of  the  people, 
and  left  to  her  successors  a  memorable  example  of  the 
way  in  which  it  behoves  a  ruler  to  deal  with  pubhc 
movements  which  he  has  not  the  means  of  resistinir. 

In  the  year  1603  the  great  Queen  died.     That  year 
Scotland  and  ^^^  ou  many  accounts,  one  of  the  most  impor- 
comTparts  of  ^^^^^  cpochs  iu  our  history.     It  Avas  then  that 
pire  wUh ''°^"  ^oth   Scotlaud   aud  Ireland  became  parts  of 
England.        ^j^^  ^^^^  empire  with  England.     Both  Scot- 
land and  Ireland,  indeed,  had  been  subjugated  by  the 
Plantagenets  ;    but  neither  country  had  been  patient 
under  the  yoke.      Scotland  had,  with   heroic  energy, 
vindicated   her  independence,  had,  from  the   time  of 
Robert  Bruce,  been  a  separate  kingdom,  and  was  now 
joined  to  the  southern  part  of  the  island  in  a  manner 
wdiich  rather  gratified  than  wounded  her  national  pride. 
Ireland  had  never,  since  the  days  of  Henry  the  Second, 
been  able  to  expel  the  foreign  invaders  ;  but  she  had 
struggled  against  them  long  and  fiercely.     During  the 
fourteentli  and  fifteenth  centuries  the  English  power  in 
that  island  was  constantly  declining,  and,  in  the  days 
of  Henry  the  Seventh,  had  sunk  to  the  lowest  point. 
The  Irish  dominions  of  that  prince  consisted  only  of 
tlie  counties  of  Dubhn  and  Louth,  of  some  parts  of 
INIeath  and-  Kildare,  and  of  a  few  seaports  scattered 
along  the  coast.     A  large  portion  even  of  Leinster  was 
not  yet  divided  into  counties.      Munster,  Ulster,  and 
Connaught    were    ruled    by    petty   sovereigns,    partly 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  71 


Celts,  and  partly  degenerate  Normans,  who  had  forgot- 
ten their  origin  and  had  adopted  the  Celtic  language 
and  manners.  But,  during  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
English  power  had  made  great  progress.  The  half 
savage  chieftains  who  reigned  beyond  the  pale  had 
submitted  one  after  another  to  the  lieutenants  of  the 
Tudors.  x\t  length,  a  few  weeks  before  the  death  of 
Elizabeth,  the  conquest,  which  had  been  begun  more 
than  four  humlred  years  before  by  Strongbow,  was 
completed  by  Mountjoy.  Scarcely  had  James  the  First 
mounted  the  English  throne  Avhen  the  last  O'Donnell 
and  O'Neill  who  have  held  the  raid-c  of  independent 
princes  kissed  his  hand  at  Whitehall.  Thenceforward 
his  writs  ran  and  his  judges  held  assizes  in  every  part 
of  Ireland ;  and  the  English  law  superseded  the  cus- 
toms which  had  prevailed  among  the  aboriginal  tribes. 

In  extent  Scotland  and  Ireland  were  nearly  equal  to 
each  other,  and  were  together  nearly  equal  to  England, 
but  were  much  less  thickly  peopled  than  England,  and 
were  very  far  behind  England  in  wealth  and  civilisa- 
tion. Scotland  had  been  kept  back  by  the  sterility  of 
her  soil ;  and,  in  the  midst  of  light,  the  thick  darkness 
of  the  middle  aires  still  rested  on  Ireland. 

The  ])opulation  of  Scotland,  with  the  excc})tion  of 
the  Celtic  tribes  which  were  thinly  scattered  over  the 
Hebrides  and  over  the  mountainous  ])arts  of  the  north- 
ern shires,  was  of  the  same  blood  with  the  population 
of  England,  and  spoke  a  tongue  which  did  not  differ 
from  the  purest  English  more  than  the  dialects  of  Som-l 
ersetshire  and  Lancashire  differed  from  each  other.  In 
Ireland,  on  the  contrary,  the  population,  Avith  the  ex- 
ception of  the  small  English  colony  near  the  coast,  was 
Celtic,  and  still  kept  the  Celtic  speech  and  maimers. 

In  natural  courage  and  intellitrence  both  the  nations 


72  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

which  now  became  connected  with  England  ranked 
high.  In  perseverance,  in  selfcommand,  in  forethought, 
in  all  the  virtues  which  conduce  to  sviccess  in  life,  the 
Scots  have  never  been  surpassed.  The  Irish,  on  tlip 
other  hand,  were  distinguished  by  qualities  which  tend 
to  make  men  interesting  rather  than  prosperous.  They 
were  an  ardent  and  impetuous  race,  easily  moved  to 
tears  or  to  luugliter,  to  fury  or  to  love.  Alone  among 
the  nations  of  northern  Europe  they  had  the  suscep- 
tibility, the  vivacity,  the  natural  turn  for  acting  and 
rhetoric,  which  are  indigenous  on  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean  Sea.  In  mental  cultivation  Scotland 
had  an  indisputable  superiority.  Though  that  king- 
dom was  then  the  poorest  in  Christendom,  it  already 
vied  in  every  branch  of  learning  with  the  most  favoured 
countries.  Scotsmen,  whose  dwellings  and  whose  food 
were  as  wretched  as  those  of  the  Icelanders  of  our 
time,  Avrote  Latin  verse  with  more  than  the  delicacy 
of  Vida,  and  made  discoveries  in  science  which  would 
have  added  to  the  renown  of  Galileo.  Ireland  could 
boast  of  no  Buchanan  or  Napier.  The  genius,  with 
which  her  aboriginal  inhabitants  were  largely  endowed, 
showed  itself  as  yet  only  in  ballads  which,  wild  and 
rugged  as  they  were,  seemed  to  the  judging  eye  of 
Spenser  to  contain  a  portion  of  the  pure  gold  of  poetry. 
Scotland,  in  becoming  part  of  the  British  monarchy, 
preserved  all  her  dignity.  Having,  during  many  gen- 
erations, courageously  withstood  the  English  arms,  she 
was  now  joined  to  her  stronger  neighbour  on  the  most 
honourable  terms.  She  gave  a  King  instead  of  receiv- 
mcr  one.  She  retained  her  own  constitution  and  laws. 
Her  tribunals  and  parliaments  remained  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  the  tribunals  and  parliaments  which  sate  at 
Westminster.     The  administration  of  Scotland  was  in 


Cii.  1]  BEFORE    TIIK   RESTORATION.  73 

Scottish  hands  ;  for  no  Enghshman  had  any  motive  to 
emigrate  northward,  and  to  contend  with  the  slirewd- 
est  and  most  pertinacious  of  all  races  for  what  was  to 
be  scraped  together  in  the  poorest  of  all  treasuries.^ 
Nevertheless  Scotland  by  no  means  escaped  the  fate 
ordained  for  every  country  which  is  connected,  but  not 
incorporated,  with  another  country  of  greater  resources. 
Though  in  name  an  independent  kingdom,  she  was, 
during  more  than  a  century,  really  treated,  in  many 
respects,  as  a  subject  province. 

Ireland  was  undisguisedly  governed  as  a  dependency 
won  by  the  sword.  Her  rude  national  institutions  had 
perished.  The  English  colonists  submitted  to  the  dic- 
tation of  the  mother  country,  without  whose  support 
they  could  not  exist,  and  indemnified  themselves  by 
trampling  on  the  people  among  whom  they  had  settled. 
The  parliaments  which  met  at  Dublin  could  pass  no 
law  which  had  not  previously  been  approved  by  the 
English  Privy  Council.  The  authority  of  the  English 
Icsislature  extended  over  Ii'eland.  The  executive  ad- 
ministration  was  intrusted  to  men  taken  either  from 
England  or  from  the  English  pale,  and,  in  either  case, 
regarded  as  foreigners,  and  even  as  enemies,  by  the 
Celtic  ]>oi)ulation. 

But  the  circumstance  which,  more  than  any  other, 
has  made  Ireland  to  differ  from  Scotland  remains  to 
be  noticed.  Scotland  was  Protestant.  In  no  part  of 
Europe  had  the  movement  of  the  popular  mind  against 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  been  so  rapid  and  violent. 
The  reformers  had  vanquished,  deposed,  and  impris- 

1  Tlie  curlier  editions  contain  this  sentence  omitted  on  the  final  revision: 
"  Meanwhile  Scottish  advinturors  poured  .southward,  and  obtained  in  all 
the  walks  of  life  a  prosperity  which  excited  much  envy,  but  which  was  in 
(general  only  the  just  reward  of  prudence  and  industry." 


74  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

oned  their  idolatrous  sovereign.  They  would  not  en- 
dure even  such  a  com])romise  as  had  been  effected  in 
England.  They  had  established  the  Calvinistic  doc- 
trine, discipline,  and  worship  ;  and  they  made  little 
distinction  between  Popery  and  Prelacy,  between  the 
Mass  and  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Unfortunately 
for  Scotland,  the  prince  whom  she  sent  to  govern  a 
fairer  inheritance  had  been  so  much  annoyed  by  the 
pertinacity  with  which  her  theologians  had  asserted 
against  him  the  privileges  of  the  synod  and  the  pulpit 
that  he  hated  the  ecclesiastical  polity  to  which  she  was 
fondly  attached  as  much  as  it  was  in  his  effeminate  na- 
ture to  hate  anything,  and  had  no  sooner  mounted  the 
English  throne  than  he  beffan  to  show  an  intolerant 
zeal  for  the  g-overnment  and  ritual  of  the  Eng-lish 
Church. 

The  Irish  were  the  only  people  of  northern  Europe 
who  had  remained  true  to  the  old  relio-ion.  This  is 
to  be  partly  ascribed  to  the  circumstance  that  they 
were  some  centuries  behind  their  neighbours  in  knowl- 
edge. But  other  causes  had  cooperated.  The  Refor- 
mation had  been  a  national  as  well  as  a  moral  revolt. 
It  had  been,  not  only  an  insurrection  of  the  laity  against 
the  clergy,  but  also  an  insurrection  of  all  the  branches 
of  the  great  German  race  against  an  alien  domination. 
It  is  a  most  sionificant  circumstance  that  no  large  so- 
ciety  of  which  the  tong-ue  is  not  Teutonic  has  ever 
turned  Protestant,  and  that,  wherever  a  language  de- 
rived from  that  of  ancient  Rome  is  spoken,  the  religion 
of  modern  Rome  to  this  day  prevails.  The  patriotism 
of  the  Irish  had  taken  a  peculiar  direction.  The  object 
of  their  animosity  was  not  Rome,  but  England  ;  and 
they  had  especial  reason  to  abhor  those  English  sov- 
ereigns who  had  been  the  chiefs  of  the  great  schism, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  76 

Heni'v  the  Eighth  and  Ehzabeth.  Durino;  the  vain 
struggle  which  two  generations  of  Milesian  princes 
maintained  against  the  Tudors,  religious  enthusiasm 
and  national  enthusiasm  became  inseparably  blended 
in  the  minds  of  the  vanquished  race.  The  new  feud 
of  Protestant  and  Papist  inflamed  the  old  feud  of  Saxon 
and  Celt.  The  Enghsh  conquerors,  meanwhile,  neg- 
lected all  legitimate  means  of  conversion.  No  care 
■was  taken  to  provide  the  vanquished  nation  with  in- 
structors capable  of  making  themselves  understood. 
No  translation  of  the  Bible  was  put  forth  in  the  Irish 
language.  The  government  contented  itself  with  set- 
ting up  a  vast  hierarchy  of  Protestant  archbishops, 
bishops,  and  rectors,  who  did  nothing,  and  who,  for 
doing  nothing,  were  paid  out  of  the  spoils  of  a  Church 
loved  and  revered  by  the  great  body  of  the  people. 

There  was  much  in  the  state  both  of  Scotland  and 
of  Ireland  which  might  well  excite  the  painful  appre- 
hensions of  a  farsighted  statesman.  As  yet,  however, 
there  was  the  appearance  of  tranquillity.  For  the  first 
time  all  the  British  isles  were  peaceably  united  under 
one  sceptre. 

It  should  seem  that  the  weight  of  England  among 
Euro])ean  nations  ought,  from  this  epoch,  to  have 
greatly  increased.  The  territory  which  her  new  King 
governed  was,  in  extent,  nearly  double  that  which 
Elizabeth  had  inherited.  His  empire  was  also  the  most 
complete  within  itself  and  the  most  secure  from  attack 
that  was  to  be  found  in  the  world.  The  Plantagenets 
and  Tudors  had  been  repeatedly  under  the  necessity  of 
defending  themselves  against  Scotland  while  they  were 
engaged  in  continental  war.  The  long  conflict  in  Ire- 
land  had  been  a  severe  and  perpetual  drain  on  their 
resources.     Yet  even  under  such  disadvantages  those 


76  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

sovereigns  had  been  higMy  considered  throughout 
Chi'istendom.  It  miglit,  therefore,  not  unreasonably 
be  expected  that  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  com- 
bined would  form  a  state  second  to  none  that  then  ex- 
isted. 

All  such  expectations  were  strangely  disappointed. 
Diminution  O^^  ^^^^  '^^7  of  the  accession  of  James  the  First 
tau.''eofEng"-  England  descended  fi'om  the  rank  which 
^cessfonVf'^  shc  had  hitherto  held,  and  began  to  be  re- 
james  I.  gardcd  ^s  a  power  hardly  of  the  second  order. 
During  many  years  the  great  British  monarchy,  under 
four  successive  princes  of  the  House  of  Stuart,  was 
scarcely  a  more  important  member  of  the  European 
system  than  the  little  kingdom  of  Scotland  had  pre- 
viously been.  This,  however,  is  little  to  be  regretted. 
Of  James  the  First,  as  of  John,  it  may  be  said  that, 
if  his  administration  liad  been  able  and  splendid,  it 
would  probably  have  been  fatal  to  our  country,  and 
that  we  owe  more  to  his  weakness  and  meanness  than 
to  the  wisdom  and  couracve  of  much  better  sovereigns. 
He  came  to  the  throne  at  a  critical  moment.  The  time 
was  fast  approaching  when  either  the  King  must  be- 
come absolute,  or  the  Parliament  must  control  the 
whole  executive  administration.  Had  James  been, 
hke  Henry  the  Fourth,  like  Maurice  of  Nassau,  or  like 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  a  valiant,  active,  and  politic  raler, 
had  he  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Protestants  of 
Europe,  had  he  gained  great  victories  over  Tilly  and 
Spinola,  had  he  adorned  Westminster  with  the  sj^oils 
of  Bavarian  monasteries  and  Flemish  cathedrals,  had 
he  hung  Austrian  and  Castilian  banner*  in  St.  Paul's, 
and  had  he  found  himself,  after  great  achievements,  at 
the  head  of  fifty  thousand  troops,  brave,  well  disci- 
plined, and  devotedly  attached  to  his  person,  the  Eng- 


Ch.  l]  before  the  restoration.  77 

lish  Parliament  would  soon  have  been  nothing  more 
than  a  name.  Happily  he  was  not  a  man  to  play  such 
a  part.  He  began  his  administration  by  putting  an  end 
to  the  war  which  had  raged  during  many  years  between 
England  and  Spain  ;  and  from  that  time  he  shunned 
hostilities  with  a  caution  which  was  proof  against  the  in- 
sults of  his  neighbours  and  the  clamours  of  his  subjects. 
Not  till  the  last  year  of  his  life  could  the  influence  of 
his  son,  his  favourite,  his  Parliament  and  his  people  com- 
bined, induce  him  to  strike  one  feeble  blow  in  defence 
of  his  family  and  of  his  religion.  It  was  well  for  those 
whom  he  governed,  that  he  in  this  matter  disregarded 
their  wishes.  The  effect  of  his  pacific  poHcy  was  that, 
in  his  time,  no  regular  troops  were  needed,  and  that, 
while  France,  Spain,  Italy,  Belgium,  and  Germany 
swarmed  with  mercenary  soldiers,  the  defence  of  our 
island  was  still  confided  to  the  militia. 

As  the  King  had  no  standing  army,  and  did  not  even 
attempt  to  form  one,  it  would  have  been  wise  in  him  to 
avoid  any  conflict  with  his  peo]»le.  But  such  was  his 
indiscretion  that,  while  he  altogether  neglected  the 
means  which  alone  could  make  him  really  absolute,  he 
constantly  put  forward,  in  the  most  offensive  form, 
claims  of  which  none  of  his  predecessors  had  ever 
dreamed.  It  was  at  this  time  tlint  those  Doctnneof 
strano;e  theories  which  Filmer  afterwards  '""^'^  "^'^'' 
formed  into  a  system,  and  which  became  the  badge 
of  the  most  violent  class  of  Tories  and  high  church- 
men, first  emerged  into  notice.  It  was  gravely  main- 
tained that  the  Supreme  Being  regarded  hereditary 
monarchy,  as  opjiosed  to  other  forms  of  government, 
with  peculiar  favour  ;  that  the  rule  of  succession  in  order 
of  primogeniture  was  a  divine  institution,  anterior  to 
the  Christian,  and  even   to  the  Mosaic  dispensation  ; 


78  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Cii.  1. 

that  no  human  power,  not  even  that  of  the  whole  legis- 
lature, no  length  of  adverse  possession,  though  it  ex- 
tended to  ten  centuries,  could  deprive  a  legitimate 
prince  of  his  rights ;  that  the  authority  of  such  a  prince 
was  necessarily  always  despotic  ;  that  the  laws  by  which, 
in  England  and  in  other  countries,  the  prerogative  was 
limited  were  to  be  regarded  merely  as  concessions 
which  the  sovereign  had  freely  made  and  miglit  at  his 
pleasure  resume  ;  and  that  any  treaty  which  a  king 
might  conclude  with  his  people  was  merely  a  declara- 
tion of  his  present  intentions,  and  not  a  contract  of 
which  the  performance  could  be  demanded.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  this  theory,  though  intended  to  strengthen 
the  foundations  of  government,  altogether  unsettles 
them.  Does  the  divine  and  immutable  law  of  primo- 
geniture admit  females,  or  exclude  them  ?  On  either 
supposition  lialf  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  must  be  usurp- 
ers, reionins  in  defiance  of  the  law  of  God,  and  liable 
to  be  dispossessed  by  the  rightful  heirs.  The  doctrine 
that  kingly  government  is  peculiarly  fivoured  by  Heaven 
received  no  countenance  from  the  Old  Testament ;  for 
in  the  Old  Testament  we  read  that  the  chosen  people 
were  blamed  and  punished  for  desiring  a  king,  and  that 
they  were  afterwards  commanded  to  withdraw  their 
allegiance  from  him.  Their  whole  history,  far  from 
countenancincT  the  notion  that  succession  in  order  of 
primogeniture  is  of  divine  institution,  would  rather  seem 
to  indicate  that  younger  brothers  are  under  the  especial 
protection  of  heaven.  Isaac  was  not  the  eldest  son  of 
Abraham,  nor  Jacob  of  Isaac,  nor  Judah  of  Jacob,  nor 
David  of  Jesse,  nor  Solomon  of  David.  Nor  does  the 
system  of  Filmer  receive  any  countenance  from  those 
passages  of  the  New  Testament  which  describe  govern- 


Oh.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  79 

merit  as  an  ordinance  of  God  :  for  tlie  goveniment  un- 
der wliicli  the  writers  of  tlie  New  Testament  lived  was 
not  a  hereditary  monarchy.     The   Roman   Emperors 
were    republican    magistrates,   n.-nned    by  the   Senate. 
None  of  them  pretended  to  rule  by  right  of  birth  ;  and, 
in  flict,  both  Tiberius,  to  wliom  Christ  commanded  that 
tribute  should  be  given,  and  Nero,  whom  Paul  directed 
the  Romans  to  obey,  were,  according  to  the  patriarchal 
theory  of  government,  usurpers.     In  the  middle  ages 
the  doctrine  of  mdefeasible  hereditary  right  wonld  have 
been  reo-arded  as  heretical :  for  it  was  altogether  in- 
compatible  with  the  high  pretensions  of  the  Church  of 
Rome.     It  was  a  doctrine   unknown  to  the  founders 
of  the  Church  of  England.      The  Homily  on  Wilful 
Rebellion  had  strongly,  and  indeed  too  strongly,  incul- 
cated submission  to  constituted  authority,  but  had  made 
no  distinction  between  hereditary  and  elective  monar- 
chies, or  between  monarchies  and  republics.     Indeed 
most  of  the  predecessors  of  James  would,  from  personal 
motives,  have  regarded  the  pati-iarchal  theory  of  gov- 
ernment with  aversion.     William   Rufus,   Henry  the 
First,  Stephen,  John,   Henry  the  Fourth,  Henry  the 
Fifth,  Henry  the  Sixth,  Richard  the  Third,  and  Henry 
the  Seventh,  had  all  reigned  in  defiance  of  the  strict 
rule  of  descent.     A  grave  doubt  hung  over  the  legiti- 
macy both  of  ]\Iary  and  of  Elizabeth.     It  was  impossi- 
ble that  both  Catliarine  of  Aragon  and  Anne  Boleyii 
could  have  been  lawfully  married  to  Henry  the  Eighth  ; 
and  the  highest  authority  in  the  realm  had  pronounced 
that  neither  was  so.     The  Tudors,  far  from  consider- 
ing the  law  of  succession  as  a  divine  and  iuicliann;eal)le 
institution,  were  constantly  tampering  with  it.     Hein-y 
the  Eighth  obtained  an  act  of  parliament,  giving  him 
power  to  leave  the  crown  by  will,  and  actually  mad(!  a 


80  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

will  to  the  prejudice  of  the  royal  family  of  Scotland. 
Edward  the  Sixth,  unauthorised  by  parliament,  assumed 
a  similar  power,  with  the  full  approbation  of  the  most 
eminent  Reformers.  Elizabeth,  conscious  that  her  own 
title  was  open  to  grave  objection,  and  unwilling  to  ad- 
mit even  a  reversionary  right  in  her  rival  and  enemy 
the  Queen  of  Scots,  induced  the  Parliament  to  pass  a 
law,  enacting  that  whoever  should  deny  the  compe- 
tency of  the  reigning  sovereign,  with  the  assent  of  the 
Estates  of  the  realm,  to  alter  the  succession,  should 
suffer  death  as  a  traitor.  But  the  situation  of  James 
was  widely  different  from  that  of  Elizabeth.  Far  infe- 
rior to  her  in  abilities  and  in  popularity,  regarded  by 
the  English  as  an  alien,  and  excluded  from  the  throne 
by  the  testament  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  King  of 
Scots  was  yet  the  undoubted  heir  of  William  the  Con- 
queror and  of  Egbert.  He  had,  therefore,  an  obvious 
mterest  in  inculcating  the  superstitious  notion  that 
birth  confers  rights  anterior  to  law,  and  unalterable 
by  law.  It  was  a  notion,  moreover,  well  suited  to 
his  intellect  and  temper.  It  soon  found  many  advo- 
cates among  those  who  aspired  to  his  favour,  and  made 
rapid  progress  among  the  clergy  of  the  Established 
Church. 

Thus,  at  the  very  moment  at  which  a  republican 
spirit  began  to  manifest  itself  strongly  in  the  Parlia- 
ment and  in  the  country,  the  claims  of  the  monarch 
took  a  monstrous  form  which  would  have  disg-usted  the 
proudest  and  most  arbitrary  of  those  who  had  preceded 
him  on  the  throne. 

James  was  always  boasting  of  his  skill  in  what  he 
called  kingcraft ;  and  yet  it  is  hardly  possible  even  to 
imagine  a  course  more  directly  opposed  to  all  the  rules 
of  kingcraft  thar.  that  which  he  followed.     The  policy 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  81 

of  wise  rulers  has  always  been  to  disguise  strong  acts 
under  popular  forms.  It  was  thus  that  Augustus  and 
Napoleon  established  absolute  monarchies,  while  the 
public  regarded  them  merely  as  eminent  citizens  in- 
vested with  temporary  magistracies.  The  policy  of 
James  was  the  direct  reverse  of  theirs.  He  enraged 
and  alarmed  his  Parliament  by  constantly  telling  them 
that  they  held  their  privileges  merely  during  his  pleas- 
ure, and  that  they  had  no  more  business  to  inquire 
what  he  might  lawfully  do  than  what  the  Deity  might 
lawfully  do.  Yet  he  quailed  before  them,  abandoned 
minister  after  minister  to  their  vengeance,  and  suffered 
them  to  tease  him  into  acts  directly  opposed  to  his 
strongest  inclinations.  Thus  the  indio-nation  excited 
by  his  claims  and  the  scorn  excited  by  his  concessions 
went  on  growiu";  together.  Bv  his  fondness  for  worth.- 
less  minions,  and  by  the  sanction  which  he  gave  to 
their  tyranny  and  rapacity,  he  kept  discontent  con- 
stantly ahve.  His  cowardice,  his  childishness,  his 
pedantry,  his  ungainly  person  and  manners,  his  pro- 
vincial accent  made  him  an  object  of  derision.  Even 
in  his  virtues  and  accomplishments  there  was  something 
eminently  mikiugly.  Throughout  the  whole  course  of 
his  reign,  all  the  venerable  associations  by  which  the 
throne  had  long  been  fenced  were  gradually  losing 
their  strength.  During  two  hundred  years  all  the 
sovereigns  who  had  ruled  England,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception  of  the  unfortunate  Henry  the  Sixth,  had  been 
Sitrongminded,  highsj)irited,  courageous,  and  of  princely 
Ijearing.  Almost  all  had  possessed  abilities  above  the 
ordinary  level.  It  was  no  light  thing  that,  on  the  very 
eve  of  the  decisive  struggle  between  our  Kings  and 
their  Parliaments,  royalty  should  be  exhibited  to  the 
world  stammering,  slobbering,  shedding  unmanly  tears, 

VOL.  I.  G 


82  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  IGn.  I. 

trembling  at  a  drawn  sword,  and  talking  in  the  stylo 
alternately  of  a  buffoon  and  of  a  pedagogue. 

In  the  meantime  the  religious  dissensions,  by  which, 
The  separa-  fi'oni  the  days  of  Edward  the  Sixth,  the  Prot- 
the^cwch"*  estant  body  had  been  distracted,  had  become 
tims  becomes  moi'^  formidable  than  ever.  The  interval 
wider.  which  had  separated  the  first  generation  of 

Puritans  from  Cranmer  and  Jewel  was  small  indeed 
when  compared  with  the  interval  which  separated  the 
third  generation  of  Puritans  from  Laud  and  Hammond. 
While  the  recollection  of  Mary's  cruelties  was  still  fresh, 
while  the  power  of  the  Catholic  party  still  inspired  ap- 
prehension, while  Spain  still  retained  ascendency  and 
aspired  to  universal  dominion,  all  the  reformed  sects 
knew  that  they  had  a  strong  common  interest  and  a 
deadly  common  enemy.  The  animosity  which  they 
felt  towards  each  other  was  languid  when  compared 
with  the  animosity  which  they  all  felt  toAvards  Rome. 
Conformists  and  Nonconformists  had  heartily  joined  in 
enacting  penal  laws  of  extreme  severity  against  the 
Papists.  But  when  more  than  half  a  century  of  un- 
disturbed possession  had  given  confidence  to  the  Estab- 
lished Church,  when  nine  tenths  of  the  nation  had 
become  heartily  Protestant,  when  England  was  at 
peace  with  all  the  world,  when  there  was  no  danger 
that  Popery  would  be  forced  by  foreign  arms  on  the 
nation,  when  the  last  confessors  who  had  stood  before 
Bonner  had  passed  away,  a  change  took  place  in  the 
feeling  of  the  Anglican  clergy.  Their  hostility  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  doctrine  and  discipline  was  consider- 
ably mitigated.  Their,  dislike  of  the  Puritans,  on  the 
other  hand,  increased  daily.  The  controversies  which 
nad  fi'om  the  beginning  divided  the  Protestant  party 
took  such  a  form  as  made  reconciliation  hopeless  ;  and 


Ch.   I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  83 

new  controversies  of  still  greater  importance  were  added 
to  the  old  subjects  of  dispute. 

The  founders  of  the  Anglican  Church  had  retained 
episcopacy  as  an  ancient,  a  decent,  and  a  convenient 
ecclesiastical  polity,  but  had  not  declared  that  form  of 
church  government  to  be  of  divine  institution.     We 
have  already  seen  how  low  an  estimate  Cranmer  had 
formed  of  the  office  of  a  Bishop.     In  the  reign  of  Eliz- 
abeth,   Jewel,   Cooper,   Whitgift,   and    other  eminent 
doctors  defended  prelacy  as  innocent,  as  useful,  as  what 
the  state  might  lawfully  establish,  as  what,  when  estab- 
lished by  the  state,  was  entitled  to  the  resi)ect  of  every 
citizen.     But  they  never  denied  that  a  Christian  com- 
munity without   a   Bishop   might   be   a  pure   Church. 
On  the  contrary,  they  regarded  the  Protestants  of  the 
Continent  as  of  the  same  household  of  faith  with  them- 
selves.    Eno-lislunen  in  Eno-land  were  indeed  bound  to 
acknowledge  the  authority  of  the  Bishop,  as  they  were 
bound  to  acknowledge  the  authority  of  the  Sheriff  and 
of  the  Coroner  :   but  the  obligation  was  j)urely  local. 
An  English  churchman,  nay  even  an  English  prelate, 
if  he  went  to  Holland,  conformed  without  scruple  to 
the  established  religion  of  Holland.     Abroad  the  ambas- 
sadors of  Elizabeth  and  James  went  in  state  to  the  very 
worshi])  which  Elizabeth  and  James  persecuted  at  home, 
and  carefully  abstained  from   decorating  their  private 
chapels  after  the  Anglican  fashion,  lest  scandal  should 
be  ffiven  to  weaker  brethren.     An  instrument  is  still 
extant  bv  wliich   the  Primate  of  all  England,  in   tiie 
year    1582,    authorised    a  Scotch    minister,    ordained, 
according  to  the  laudable  forms  of  the  Scotch  Church, 
by  the  Synod  of  East  Lothian   to  preach  and  admin- 
ister the  Sacraments  in  any  part   of  the   province  of 
Canterbury.^     In  the  year  IGOo,  the  Ccivocation  of 

1  Strypc's  I<il'c  of  {{riiulal.  Appendix  to  Book  II.  No.  .Nvii. 


8i  HISTORY    OF    ENGLA>{D,  [Ch.  I. 

the    province   of  Canterbury  solemnly  recognised  the 

Church    of  Scotland,    a    Church    in    which    episcopal 

control  and  episcopal  ordination  were  then  unknown, 

as  a  branch  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  of  Christ.^ 

It  was    even    held   that  Presbyterian   ministers  were 

entitled   to    place   and  voice  in  oecumenical  councils. 

When    the    States   General  of  the   United  Provinces 

convoked  at  Dort  a  synod  of  doctors  not  episcopally 

ordained,  an   English   Bishop   and   an   English   Dean, 

commissioned  by  the  head  of  the  English  Church,  sate 

with  those  doctors,  preached  to  them,  and  voted  with 

them    on    the    gravest   questions    of  theology.      Nay, 

many    English   benefices    were  held   by   divines    who 

had  been  admitted  to  the  ministry  in  the  Calvinistic 

form  used  on  the  Continent ;  nor  was  reordination  by 

a  Bishop  in  such  cases  then  thought  necessary,  or  even 

lawful. 

But  a  new  race  of  divines  was  already  rising  in  the 
Church  of  England.  In  their  view  the  episcopal  office 
was  essential  to  the  welfare  of  a  Christian  societv  and 
to  the  efficacy  of  the  most  solemn  ordinances  of  religion. 
To  that  office  belonged  certain  high  and  sacred  privi- 
leges, which  no  human  power  could  give  or  take  away. 
A  church  mio-ht  as  well  be  without  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  or  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  as  Avithout 
the  apostolical  orders  ;  and  the  Church  of  Rome,  which, 
in  the  midst  of  all  her  corruptions,  had  retained  the 
apostolical  orders,  was  nearer  to  primitive  purity  than 
those  reformed  societies  which  had  rashly  set  up,  in 
opposition  to  the  divine  model,  a  system  invented  by 
men. 

In  the  days  of  Edward  the  Sixth  and  of  Elizabeth,  the 
defenders  of  the  Anglican  ritual  had  generally  contented 
themselves  with  saying  that  it  might  be  used  without 

1  Canon  55.  of  1005. 


Ch.   I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  85 

sin,  and  tliat,  therefore,  none  bnt  a  perverse  and  vnidu- 
tiful  subject  would  refuse  to  use  it  when  enjoined  to  do 
so  by  the  niaoistrate.  Now,  however,  that  rising  party 
whicl  claimed  for  the  poHty  of  the  Church  a  celestial 
origin  began  to  ascribe  to  her  services  a  new  dignity 
and  importance.  It  was  hinted  that,  if  the  established 
worship  had  any  fault,  that  fault  was  extreme  simplicity, 
and  that  the  Reformers  had,  in  the  heat  of  their  quarrel 
with  Rome,  abolished  many  ancient  ceremonies  which 
might  with  advantao;e  have  been  retained.  Davs  and 
places  were  again  held  in  mysterious  veneration.  Some 
practices  which  had  long  been  disused,  and  which  were 
commonly  regarded  as  superstitious  mummeries,  were 
revived.  Paintings  and  carvings,  which  had  escaped 
the  fury  of  the  first  generation  of  Protestants,  became 
the  objects  of  a  respect  such  as  to  many  seemed  idola- 
trous. 

No  part  of  the  system  of  the  old  Church  had  been 
more  detested  by  the  reformers  than  the  honour  paid 
to  celibacy.  They  held  that  the  doctrine  of  Rome  on 
this  subject  had  been  prophetically  condemned  by  the 
Apostle  Paul,  as  a  doctrine  of  devils  ;  and  they  dwelt 
much  on  the  crimes  and  scandals  which  seemed  to  prove 
the  justice  of  this  awful  denunciation.  Luther  had 
evinced  his  own  opinion  in  the  clearest  manner,  by 
espousing  a  nun.  Some  of  the  most  illustrious  bishops 
and  priests  who  had  died  bv  fire  durino-  the  reitm  of 
Mary  had  left  wives  and  children.  Now,  however,  it 
began  to  be  rumoured  that  the  old  monastic  spirit  had 
reappeared  in  the  Church  of  England  ;  that  there  was 
in  high  quarters  a  prejudice  against  married  priests  ; 
that  even  laymcMi,  who  called  themselves  Protestant';, 
had  made  resolutions  of  celibacy  which  almost  amounted 
to  vows ;  nay,  that  a  minister  of  the  established  relig- 
ion had  set  up  a  nunnery,  in  which  the  psalms  Avere 


86  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

chaunted  at  midnight,  by  a  company  of  virgins  dedi- 
cated to  God.^ 

Nor  was  this  alL  A  class  of  questions  as  to  whicii 
the  founders  of  tiie  Anohcan  Church  and  the  first  gen- 
eration  of  Puritans  had  differed  httle  or  not  at  all  began 
to  furnish  matter  for  fierce  disputes.  The  controversies 
which  had  divided  the  Protestant  body  in  its  infancy 
had  related  almost  exclusively  to  church  government 
and  to  ceremonies.  There  had  been  no  serious  quarrel 
between  the  contending  parties  on  points  of  metaphys- 
ical theology.  The  doctrines  held  by  the  chiefs  of  the 
hierarchy  touching  original  sin,  faith,  grace,  predestina- 
tion, and  election,  were  those  which  are  popularly  called 
Calvinistic.  Towards  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reijni 
her  favourite  prelate.  Archbishop  Whitgift,  drew  up, 
in  concert  witli  the  Bishop  of  London  and  other  theo- 
logians, the  celebrated  instrument  known  by  the  name 
of  the  Lambeth  Articles.  In  that  instrument  the  most 
startling  of  the  Calvinistic  doctrines  are  affirmed  with 
a  distinctness  which  would  shock  many  who,  in  our  age, 
are  reputed  Calvinists.  One  clergyman,  who  took  the 
opposite  side,  and  spoke  harshly  of  Calvin,  was  arraigned 
for  his  pi'esumption  by  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
and  escaped  punishment  only  by  expressing  his  firm  be- 
lief in  the  tenets  of  reprobation  and  final  perseverance, 
and  his  sorrow  for  the  offence  which  he  had  given  to 
pious  men  by  reflecting  on  the  great  French  reformer. 
The  school  of  divinity  of  which  Hooker  was  the  chief 
occupies  a  middle  place  between  the  school  of  Cranmer 
and  the  school  of  Laud  ;  and  Hooker  has,  in  modern 
times,  been  claimed  by  the  Arminians  as  an  ally.     Yet 

1  Peckard's  Life  of  Ferrar.  The  Arminian  Nunnery,  or  a  Brief  Descrip- 
tion of  the  late  erected  monastical  Place  called  the  Arminian  Nunnery,  lit 
Little  Gidding  in  Huntingdonshire,  1041. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  87 

Hooker  pronounced  Calvin  to  have  been  a  man  supe- 
rior in  wisdom  to  any  other  divine  that  France  had 
produced,  a  man  to  whom  thousands  were  indebted  for 
the  knowledi>;e  of  divine  truth,  but  who  was  himself 
indebted  to  God  alone.  When  the  Arminian  contro- 
versy arose  in  Holland,  the  English  government  and 
the  English  Church  lent  strong  support  to  the  Calvin- 
istic  party ;  nor  is  the  English  name  altogether  free 
from  the  stain  which  has  been  left  on  that  party  by 
the  imprisonment  of  Grotius  and  the  judicial  murder 
of  Barne veldt. 

But,  even  before  the  meeting  of  the  Dutch  synod, 
that  part  of  the  Anglican  clergy  which  was  peculiarly 
hostile  to  the  Calvinistic  church  government  and  to  the 
Calvinistic  worship  had  begun  to  regard  with  dislike 
the  Calvinistic  metaphysics ;  and  this  feeling  was  very 
naturally  strengthened  by  the  gross  injustice,  insolence, 
and  cruelty  of  the  party  which  was  prevalent  at  Dort. 
The  Arminian  doctrine,  a  doctrine  less  austerely  logical 
than  that  of  the  earlv  reformers,  but  more  agreeable  to 
the  popular  notions  of  the  divine  justice  and  benevolence, 
spread  fast  and  wide.  The  infection  soon  reached  the 
court.  Opinions  which,  at  the  time  of  the  accession  of 
James,  no  clergyman  could  have  avowed  without  immi- 
nent risk  of  being  stripped  of  his  gown  were  now  the 
best  title  to  preferment.  A  divine  of  that  age,  wh'^ 
was  asked  by  a  simple  country  gentleman  what  the 
Arminians  held,  answered,  with  as  much  truth  as  wit, 
that  they  held  all  the  best  bishoprics  and  deaneries  in 
England. 

Wiiilc  the  majority  of  the  Anglican  clergy  quitted,  in 
one  direction,  the  position  wliicli  they  had  oviginally  oc- 
cupied, the  majority  of  the  Puritan  body  departed,  in  a 
direction  diametrically  (>p})osite,  from  the  ])rinciples  and 


88  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I, 

practices  of  their  fathers.  The  persecution  which  the 
separatists  liad  undergone  had  been  severe  enough  to 
irritate,  but  not  severe  enough  to  destroy.  They  had 
been  not  tamed  into  submission,  but  baited  into  savage- 
ness  and  stubbornness.  After  the  fashion  of  oppressed 
sects,  they  mistook  their  own  vindictive  feehngs  for  emo- 
tions of  piety,  encouraged  in  themselves  by  reading  and 
meditation  a  disposition  to  brood  over  their  wrongs,  and, 
when  they  had  worked  themselves  up  into  hating  their 
enemies,  imagined  that  they  were  only  hating  the  ene- 
mies of  heaven.  In  the  New  Testament  there  was 
little  indeed  which,  even  when  perverted  by  the  most 
disingenuous  exposition,  could  seem  to  countenance  the 
indulgence  of  malevolent  passions.  But  the  Old  Testa- 
ment contained  the  history  of  a  race  selected  by  God  to 
be  witnesses  of  his  unity  and  ministers  of  his  vengeance, 
and  specially  commanded  by  him  to  do  many  things 
which,  if  done  without  his  special  command,  would  have 
been  atrocious  crimes.  In  such  a  history  it  was  not 
difficult  for  fierce  and  gloomy  spirits  to  find  much  that 
might  be  distorted  to  suit  their  wishes.  The  extreme 
Puritans  therefore  beo;an  to  feel  for  the  Old  Testament 
a  preference,  which,  perhaps,  they  did  not  distinctly 
avow  even  to  themselves  ;  but  which  showed  itself  in 
all  their  sentiments  and  habits.  They  paid  to  the  He- 
brew language  a  respect  which  they  refused  to  that 
tongue  in  which  the  discourses  of  Jesus  and  the  ep:stles 
of  Paul  have  come  down  to  us.  They  baptized  their 
children  by  the  names,  not  of  Christian  saints,  but  of 
Hebrew  patriarchs  and  warriors.  In  defiance  of  the 
express  and  reiterated  declarations  of  Luther  and  Cal- 
vin, they  turned  the  weekly  festival  by  Avhich  the  Church 
had,  from  the  primitive  times,  commemorated  the  res- 
urrection  of  her  Lord,  into  a  Jewish  Sabbath.     They 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  89 

souglit  for  principles  of  jurispriulence  in  the  Mosaic  law, 
and  for  precedents  to  guide  their  ordinary  conduct  in 
the  books  of  Judo-es  and  Kino-s.  Their  thoiiohts  and 
discourse  ran  much  on  acts  which  were  assuredly  not 
recorded  as  examples  for  our  imitation.  The  prophet 
who  hewed  in  pieces  a  captive  king,  the  rebel  general 
who  gave  the  blood  of  a  queen  to  the  dogs,  the  matron 
who,  in  defiance  of  plighted  faith,  and  of  the  laws  of 
eastern  hospitality,  drove  the  nail  into  the  brain  of  the 
fugitive  ally  who  had  just  fed  at  her  board,  and  who 
was  sleeping  under  the  shadow  of  her  tent,  were  pro- 
posed as  models  to  Christians  suffering  under  the  tyranny 
of  princes  and  prelates.  Morals  and  manners  were  sub- 
jected to  a  code  resembling  that  of  the  synagogue,  when 
the  synagogue  was  in  its  worst  state.  The  dress,  the 
de])ortment,  the  language,  the  studies,  the  amusements 
of  the  rigid  sect  were  regulated  on  principles  not  unlike 
those  of  the  Pharisees  who,  proud  of  their  washed  hands 
and  broad  phylacteries,  taunted  the  Redeemer  as  a  sab- 
bathbreaker  and  a  winebibber.  It  was  a  sin  to  hang 
garlands  on  a  Maypole,  to  drink  a  friend's  health,  to 
fly  a  hawk,  to  hunt  a  stag,  to  play  at  chess,  to  wear  love- 
locks, to  put  starch  into  a  ruff,  to  touch  the  virginals, 
to  read  the  Fairy  Queen,  Rules  such  as  these,  rules 
which  would  have  appeared  insupportable  to  the  free 
and  joy(5us  spirit  of  Luther,  and  contemptible  to  the 
serene  and  ])hiloso])hical  intellect  of  Zwingle,  threw  over 
all  life  a  more  than  monastic  gloom.  The  learnino-  and 
eloquence  by  which  the  great  reformers  had  been  emi- 
nently distinguished,  and  to  which  they  had  been,  in  no 
small  measure,  indebted  for  their  success,  were  regarded 
by  the  new  school  of  Protestants  with  suspicion,  if  not 
with  aversion.  Some  precisians  had  scruples  about 
teaching  the  Latin  grammar  because  the  names  of  Mars, 


90  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ca,  I, 

Bacchus,  and  Apollo  occuiTed  in  it.  The  fine  arts  were 
all  but  proscribed.  The  solemn  peal  of  the  organ  was 
superstitious.  The  light  music  of  Ben  Jonson's  masqvies 
was  dissolute.  Half  the  fine  paintings  in  England  were 
idolatrous,  and  the  other  half  indecent.  The  extreme 
Puritan  was  at  once  known  from  other  men  by  his  gait, 
his  garb,  his  lank  hair,  the  sour  solemnity  of  his  face, 
the  upturned  white  of  his  eyes,  the  nasal  twang  with 
which  he  spoke,  and,  above  all,  by  his  peculiar  dialect. 
He  employed,  on  every  occasion,  the  imagery  and  style 
of  Scripture.  Hebraisms  violently  introduced  into  the 
English  language,  and  metaphors  borrowed  from  the 
boldest  lyric  poetry  of  a  remote  age  and  country,  and 
applied  to  the  common  concerns  of  English  life,  were 
the  most  striking  peculiarities  of  this  cant,  which  moved, 
not  without  cause,  the  derision  both  of  prelatists  and 
libertines. 

Thus  the  political  and  religious  schism  which  had 
originated  in  the  sixteenth  century  was,  during  the 
first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century,  constantly 
widening.  Theories  tending  to  Turkish  despotism 
were  in  fashion  at  Whitehall.  Theories  tending  to 
republicanism  were  in  favour  with  a  large  portion  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  violent  Prelatists  who 
were,  to  a  man,  zealous  for  prerogative,  and  the  vio- 
lent Puritans  who  were,  to  a  man,  zealou?  for  the 
privileges  of  Parliament,  regarded  each  other  with 
animosity  more  intense  than  that  which,  in  the  pre- 
ceding generation,  had  existed  between  Catholics  and 
Protestants. 

While  the  minds  of  men  were  in  this  state,  the  coun- 
try, after  a  peace  of  many  years,  at  length  engaged  in 
a  war  which  required  strenuous  exertions.  This  war 
hastened  the  approach  of  the  great  constitutional  crisis. 


C«.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  91 

It  was  necossaiy  that  the  King  should  have  a  large 
military  force.  He  could  not  have  such  a  force  with- 
out money.  He  could  not  legally  raise  money  without 
the  consent  of  Parliament.  It  followed,  therefore,  that 
he  must  either  administer  the  government  in  conform- 
ity with  the  sense  of  the  House  of  Commons,  or  must 
venture  on  such  a  violation  of  the  fundamental  laws 
of  the  land  as  had  been  unknown  during  several  cen- 
turies. The  Plantagenets  and  the  Tudors  had,  it  is 
true,  occasionally  supphed  a  deficiency  in  their  revenue 
bv  a  benevolence  or  a  forced  loan  :  but  these  expe- 
dients  were  always  of  a  temporary  nature.  To  meet 
the  regular  charge  of  a  long  war  by  regular  taxation, 
imposed  without  the  consent  of  the  Estates  of  the 
realm,  was  a  course  which  Henry  the  Eighth  himself 
would  not  have  dared  to  take.  It  seemed,  therefore, 
that  the  decisive  hour  was  approaching,  and  that  the 
En^dish  Parliament  would  soon  either  share  the  fate  of 
the  senates  of  the  Continent,  or  obtain  supreme  ascen- 
dency in  the  state. 

Just  at  this  conjuncture  James  died.     Charles  the 
First  succeeded  to  the  throne.     He  had  re-   Accogaion 
ceived  from  nature  a  far  better  understand-   '"''*  '''*"■ 


acter  of 


ing,  a  far  stronger  will,  and  a  far  keener  and  •^'^'^'"''^  ^■ 
firmer  temper  than  his  father's.  He  had  inherited  his 
father's  political  theories,  and  was  much  more  disposed 
than  his  father  to  carry  them  into  practice.  He  was, 
like  his  father,  a  zealous  episcopalian.  He  was,  more- 
over, what  his  father  had  never  been,  a  zealous  Armin- 
ian,  and,  though  no  Papist,  liked  a  Paj)ist  much  better 
than  a  Puritan.  It  would  be  unjust  to  deny  that 
Charles  had  some  of  the  qualities  of  a  good,  and  even 
of  a  great  prince.  He  wrote  and  spoke,  not,  like  his 
father,  with  the  exactness  of  a  professor,  but  after  the 


92  HISTORY    OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

fashion  of  intelliirent  and  well  educated  gentlemen. 
His  taste  in  literature  and  art  was  excellent,  his  man- 
ner dio-nified  thouoh  .  not  ffi-acious,  his  domestic  life 
without  blemish.  Faithlessness  was  the  chief  cause  of 
his  disasters,  and  is  the  chief  stain  on  his  memory.  He 
was,  in  truth,  impelled  by  an  incurable  propensity  to 
dark  and  crooked  ways.  It  may  seem  strange  that  his 
conscience,  which,  on  occasions  of  little  moment,  was 
sufficiently  sensitive,  should  never  have  reproached 
him  with  this  great  vice.  But  there  is  reason  to  be- 
hevfi  that  he  was  perfidious,  not  only  from  constitution 
and  from  habit,  but  also  on  principle.  He  seems  to 
have  learned  from  the  theolon-ians  whom  he  most  es- 
teemed  that  between  him  and  his  subjects  there  could 
be  nothing  of  the  nature  of  mutual  contract ;  that  he 
could  not,  even  if  he  would,  divest  himself  of  his  des- 
potic authority ;  and  that,  in  every  promise  which  he 
made,  there  was  an  implied  reservation  that  such 
promise  might  be  broken  in  case  of  necessity,  and  that 
of  the  necessity  he  was  the  sole  judge. 

And  now  began  that  hazardous  game  on  which  were 
Tactics  of    staked  the  destinies  of  the  Eno-lish  people.    It 

the  opposi-  ,  P   y-^ 

tion  iu  the    was  played  on  the  side  of  the  House  of  Com- 

House  of  *      \ 

Commons,  mous  witli  keenncss,  but  with  admirable  dex- 
terity, coolness,  and  perseverance.  Great  statesmen 
who  looked  far  behind  them  and  far  before  them  were 
at  the  head  of  that  assembly.  They  were  resolved  to 
place  the  King  in  such  a  situation  that  he  must  either 
conduct  the  administration  in  conformity  with  the 
wishes  of  his  Parliament,  or  make  outrageous  attacks 
on  the  most  sacred  principles  of  the  constitution.  They 
accordingly  doled  out  supplies  to  him  very  sparingly. 
He  found  that  he  must  govern  either  in  harmony  with 
the  House  of  Commons,  or  in  defiance  of  all  law.     His 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE   RESTORATION.  93 

choice  was  soon  made.  He  dissolved  his  first  Parha- 
ment,  and  levied  taxes  by  his  own  authority.  He  con- 
voked a  second  Parliament,  and  found  it  more  intrac- 
table than  the  first.  He  again  resorted  to  the  expedient 
of  dissolution,  raised  fresh  taxes  without  any  show  of 
legal  right,  and  threw  the  chiefs  of  the  opposition  into 
prison.  At  the  same  time  a  new  grievance,  which  the 
peculiar  feelings  and  habits  of  the  English  nation  made 
msupportably  painful,  and  which  seemed  to  all  discern- 
ing men  to  be  of  fearful  augury,  excited  general  dis- 
content and  alarm.  Companies  of  soldiers  were  bil- 
leted on  the  people ;  and  martial  law  was,  in  some 
places,  substituted  for  the  ancient  jurisprudence  of  the 
realm. 

The  King  called  a  tliird  Parliament,  and  soon  per- 
ceived that  the  oj)position  was  stronger  and  fiercer  than 
ever.  He  now  determined  on  a  change  of  tactics.  In- 
stead of  opposing  an  inflexible  resistance  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  Commons,  he,  after  much  altercation  and 
many  evasions,  agreed  to  a  compromise  which,  if  he 
had  faithfully  adhered  to  it,  would  have  averted  a  long 
series  of  calamities.  The  Parliament  granted  an  ample 
supply.  The  King  ratified,  in  the  most  solemn  ,,,.fitio„  of 
manner,  that  celebrated  law,  which  is  known  '"^'^'• 
by  the  name  of  the  Petition  of  Right,  and  which  is  the 
second  Great  Charter  of  the  liberties  of  England.  By 
ratifying  that  law  he  bound  himself  never  again  to 
raise  money  without  the  consent  of  the  Houses,  never 
again  to  imprison  any  person,  except  in  due  course  of 
law,  and  never  again  to  subject  his  people  to  the  juris- 
diction of  courts  martial. 

The  day  on  which  the  royal  sanction  was,  after  many 
delays,  solemnly  given  to  this  great  act,  was  a  day  of 
joy  and  hope.     The  Commons,  who  crowded  the  bar 


94  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  I 

of  the  House  of  Lords,  broke  forth  uito  loud  acclama- 
tions as  soon  as  the  clerk  had  pronounced  the  ancient 
form  of  words  by  which  our  princes  have,  during  many 
ages,  signified  tlieir  assent  to  the  wishes  of  the  Estates 
of  the  realm.  Those  acclamations  were  reechoed  by 
the  voice  of  the  capital  and  of  the  nation  ;  but  within 
three  weeks  it  became  manifest  that  Chai'les  had  no 
intention  of  observing  the  compact  into  which  he  had 
entered.  The  supply  given  by  the  representatives  of 
the  nation  was  collected.  The  promise  by  which  that 
supply  had  been  obtained  was  broken.  A  violent  con- 
test followed.  The  Parliament  was  dissolved  with  every 
mark  of  royal  displeasure.  Some  of  the  most  distin- 
guished members  were  imprisoned  ;  and  one  of  them. 
Sir  John  Eliot,  after  years  of  suffering,  died  in  con- 
finement. 

Charles,  however,  could  not  venture  to  raise,  by  his 
own  authority,  taxes  sufficient  for  carrying  on  war.  He 
accordingly  hastened  to  make  peace  with  his  neigh- 
bours, and  thenceforth  gave  his  whole  mind  to  British 
politics. 

Now  commenced  a  new  era.  ]Many  English  Kings 
had  occasionally  committed  unconstitutional  acts:  but 
none  had  ever  systematically  attempted  to  make  him- 
self a  despot,  and  to  reduce  the  Parliament  to  a  nullity. 
Such  was  the  end  which  Charles  distinctly  proposed  to 
himself.  From  March  1629  to  April  16-10,  the  Houses 
were  not  convoked.  Never  in  our  history  had  there 
been  an  interval  of  eleven  years  between  Parliament 
and  Parliament.  Only  once  had  there  been  an  inter- 
val of  even  half  that  length.  This  fact  alone  is  suffi- 
cient to  refute  those  who  represent  Charles  as  having 
merely  trodden  in  the  footstej)s  of  the  Plantagenets 
ftnd  Tudors. 


C3h.  I.]  BEFORE   THE  RESTORATION.  95 

It  is  proved,  by  the  testimony  of  the  Kino's  most 
strenuous  supporters,  that,  durino-  this  part  of  Petition  of 
his  reign,  the  provisions  ot  the  petition  oi  lated. 
Riglit  were  violated  by  him,  not  occasionally,  but  con- 
stantly, and  on  system  ;  that  a  large  part  of  the  rev- 
enue was  raised  without  any  legal  authority ;  and  that 
persons  obnoxious  to  the  government  languished  for 
years  in  prison,  without  being  ever  called  upon  to  plead 
before  any  tribunal. 

For  these  things  history  must  hold  the  King  himself 
chiefly  responsible.  From  the  time  of  his  third  Parlia- 
ment he  was  his  own  ])rime  minister.  Several  persons, 
however,  whose  temper  and  talents  were  suited  to  his 
purposes,  were  at  the  head  of  different  departments  of 
the  administration. 

Thomas  Wentwortli,  successively  created  Lord  Went- 
wortli  and  Earl  of  Strafford,  a  man  of  great  ('i,aract«r 
abilities,  elotpience,  and  courage,  but  of  a  cruel  o"vvent-^°^ 
and  imperious  nature,  was  the  counsellor  most  ^"'''"*" 
trusted  in  political  and  military  affairs.  He  had  been 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  members  of  the  opposi- 
tion, and  felt  towards  those  whom  he  had  deserted  that 
peculiar  malignity  which  has,  in.  all  ages,  been  charac- 
teristic of  apostates.  He  ])erfbctly  understood  the  feel- 
ings, the  resources,  and  the  jiolicy  of  the  party  to  which 
he  had  lately  belonged,  and  had  formed  a  vast  and 
deeply  meditated  scheme  which  very  nearly  confounded 
even  the  able  tactics  of  the  statesmen  by  whom  the 
House  of  Commons  had  been  directed.  To  this  scheme, 
in  his  confidential  correspondence,  he  gave  the  expres- 
sive name  of  Thorough.  His  object  was  to  do  in  Eng- 
land all,  and  more  than  all,  that  Richelieu  was  doing 
in  France  ;  to  make  Charles  a  monarch  as  absolute  as 
any  on  the  Continent ;  to  put  the  estates  and  the  per- 


96  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch,  I. 

sonal  liberty  of  tlie  Avliole  people  at  the  disposal  of  tlie 
crown  ;  to  deprive  the  courts  of  law  of  all  independent 
authority,  even  in  ordinary  questions  of  civil  right  be- 
tween man  and  man  ;  and  to  punish  with  merciless 
rigour  all  who  murmured  at  the  acts  of  the  govern- 
ment, or  who  applied,  even  in  the  most  decent  and  reg- 
ular manner,  to  any  tribunal  for  relief  against  those 
acts.^ 

This  was  his  end  ;  and  he  distinctly  saw  in  what 
manner  alone  this  end  could  be  attained.  There  was, 
in  truth,  about  all  his  notions  a  clearness,  coherence, 
and  precision  which,  if  he  had  not  been  pursuing  an 
object  pernicious  to  his  country  and  to  his  kind,  would 
have  justly  entitled  him  to  high  admiration.  He  saw 
that  there  was  one  instrument,  and  only  one,  by  which 
his  vast  and  daring  projects  could  be  carried  into  exe- 
cution. That  instrument  was  a  standino;  army.  To 
the  forming  of  such  an  army,  therefore,  he  directed  all 
the  energy  of  his  strong  mind.  In  Ireland,  where  he 
was  viceroy,  he  actually  succeeded  in  establishing  a 
military  despotism,  not  only  over  the  aboriginal  popula- 
tion, but  also  over  the  English  colonists,  and  was  able 
to  boast  that,  in  that  island,  the  King  was  as  absolute 
as  any  prince  in  the  whole  world  could  be.'"^ 

The  ecclesiastical  administration  was,  in  the  mean- 
Characterof  time,  principally  directed  by  William  Laud, 
laud.  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.     Of  all  the  prel- 

1  The  con-espondence  of  Wentworth  seems  to  me  full}'  to  bear  out  what 
1  have  said  in  the  text.  To  transcribe  all  the  passages  which  have  led  me 
to  the  conclusion  at  which  I  have  arrived,  would  be  impossible;  nor  would 
it  be  easy  to  make  a  better  selection  than  has  already  been  made  by  Mr. 
Hallam.  I  may,  however,  direct  the  attention  of  the  reader  paiticularly  to 
the  very  abls  paper  which  Wentworth  drew  up  respecting  the  affairs  of  the 
Palatinate.     Tiie  date  is  March  -31.  lt)37. 

*  These  are  Wentwortn's  own  words.  See  his  letter  to  Laud,  dated  Dec. 
16. 1634. 


Cii.  r.l  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  97 

ates  of  the  Anglican  Church,  Laud  had  departed  far- 
tliest  from  the  principles  of  the  Reformation,  and  had 
drawn  nearest  to  Rome.  His  theology  was  more  re- 
mote than  even  that  of  the  Dutch  Arminians  from  the 
theology  of  the  Calvinists.  His  passion  for  ceremonies, 
his  reverence  for  holidays,  vigils,  and  sacred  places,  his 
ill  concealed  dislike  of  the  marriage  of  ecclesiastics,  the 
ardent  and  not  altogether  disinterested  zeal  with  which 
he  asserted  the  claims  of  the  clergy  to  the  reverence  of 
the  laity,  would  have  made  him  an  object  of  aversion  to 
the  Puritans,  even  if  he  liad  used  only  legal  and  gentle 
means  for  the  attainment  of  his  ends.  But  his  under- 
standing was  narrow,  and  his  commerce  with  the  world 
had  been  small.  He  was  by  nature  rash,  irritable, 
(juick  to  feel  for  his  own  dignity,  slow  to  sympathize 
with  tbe  sufferings  of  others,  and  prone  to  the  error, 
common  in  superstitious  men,  of  mistaking  his  own 
peevish  and  malignant  moods  for  emotions  of  pious  zeal. 
Under  his  direction  every  corner  of  the  realm  was  sub- 
jected to  a  constant  and  minute  inspection.  Every 
little  congregation  of  separatists  was  tracked  out  and 
broken  up.  Even  the  devotions  of  private  families  could 
not  escape  the  vigilance  of  his  spies.  Such  fear  did  liis 
rigour  inspire  that  the  deadly  hatred  of  the  Church, 
which  festered  in  innumerable  bosoms,  was  generally 
disguised  under  an  outward  show  of  conformity.  On 
the  very  eve  of  troubles,  fatal  to  himself  and  to  his  or- 
der, the  Bishops  of  several  extensive  dioceses  were  able 
to  report  to  him  that  not  a  single  dissenter  was  to  be 
found  within  their  jurisdiction.^ 

The  tribunals  afforded  no  protection  to  the  subject 
against  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny  of  that  pe- 
riod.    The  judges  of  the  common  law,  holding  iheir 

1  See  liis  report  to  Charles  for  the  year  1639. 

VOL.   I.  7 


98  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Gh.  t 

situations  during  the  ])leasiire  of  the  King,  were  scan* 
dalously  obsequious.  Yet,  obsequious  as  they  were, 
they  were  less  ready  and  efficient  instruments  of  arbi- 
trary power  tiian  a  class  of  courts,  the  memory  of  which 
is  still,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  two  centuries,  held 
in  deep  abhorrence  by  the  nation.  Foremost  among 
star  Cham-  tlicse  courts  iu  uowcr  and  in  infamy  were  the 
Commission.  Star  Chamber  and  the  High  Commission,  the 
former  a  poHtical,  the  latter  a  religious  inquisition. 
Neither  was  a  part  of  the  old  constitution  of  England. 
The  Star  Chamber  had  been  remodelled,  and  the  High 
Commission  created  by  the  Tudors.  The  power  which 
these  boards  had  possessed  before  the  accession  of 
Charles  had  been  extensive  and  formidable,  but  had 
been  small  indeed  when  compared  with  that  which  they 
now  usurped.  Guided  chiefly  by  the  violent  spirit  of 
the  primate,  and  freed  from  the  control  of  Parliament, 
they  dis))layed  a  rapacity,  a  violence,  a  malignant  en- 
ergy, which  had  been  unknown  to  any  former  age.  The 
government  was  able,  through  their  instramentality,  to 
line,  imprison,  pillory,  and  mutilate  without  restraint. 
Al  separate  council  which  sate  at  York,  under  the  pres- 
idency of  Wentworth,  was  armed,  in  defiance  of  laAV, 
by  a  pure  act  of  prerogative,  with  almost  boundless 
power  over  the  northern  counties.  All  tjiese  ti'ibunals 
insulted  and  defied  the  authority  of  Westminster  Hall, 
and  daily  committed  excesses  which  the  most  distin- 
gu.ished  Royalists  have  warmly  condemned.  We  are 
informed  by  Clarendon  that  tliei'e  was  hardly  a  man 
of  note  in  the  realm  who  had  not  personal  expe- 
rience of  the  harshness  and  greediness  of  the  Star 
Chamber,  that  the  High  Commission  had  so  con- 
ducted itself  that  it  had  scarce  a  friend  left  in  the 
kingdom,    an,d   that   the    tyranny   of  the  Council    of 


Ch.  I  ]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  99 

York  had  made  the  Great  Charter  a  dead  letter  north 
of  the  Trent. 

The  government  of  England  was  now,  in  all  points 
but  one,  as  despotic  as  that  of  France.  But  that  one 
point  was  all  important.  There  was  still  no  standing 
army.  There  was,  therefore,  no  security  that  the 
whole  fabric  of  tyranny  might  not  be  subverted  in  a 
single  day  ;  and,  if  taxes  were  imposed  by  the  royal 
authority  for  the  support  of  an  army,  it  was  probable 
that  there  would  be  an  immediate  and  irresistible  ex- 
plosion. This  was  the  difficulty  which  more  than  any 
other  perplexed  Wentworth.  The  Lord  Keeper  Finch, 
in  concert  with  other  lawyers  who  were  employed  by 
the  government,  recommended  an  expedient,  which 
was  eagerly  adopted.  The  ancient  princes  of  England, 
as  thev  called  on  the  inhabitants  of  the  counties  near 
Scotland  to  arm  and  array  themselves  for  the  defence 
of  the  border,  had  sometimes  called  on  the  maritime 
counties  to  furnish  ghips  for  the  defence  of  the  coast. 
In  the  room  of  ships  money  had  sometimes 
been  accepted.  This  old  practice  it  was  now 
determined,  after  a  long  interval,  not  only  to  revive  but 
to  extend.  Former  princes  had  raised  shipmoncy  only 
in  time  of  war  ;  it  was  now  exacted  in  a  time  of  pro- 
found i)eace.  Former  jn'inces,  even  in  the  most  peril- 
ous wars,  had  raised  shipmoney  only  along  the  coasts  ; 
it  was  now  exacted  from  the  inland  shires.  Former 
princes  had  raised  shipmoney  only  for  the  maritime 
defence  of  the  country  ;  it  was  now  exacted,  by  the 
admission  of  the  Royalists  themselves,  with  the  object, 
not  of  maintaining  a  navy,  but  of  furnisliing  the  King 
with  supplies  which  might  be  increased  at  his  discre- 
tion to  any  amount,  and  expended  at  his  discretion  foj 
any  purpose. 


100  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

Tlie  whole  nation  was  alarmed  and  incensed.  John 
Hampden,  an  opulent  and  well  born  gentleman  of 
Buckinghamshire,  highly  considered  in  his  own  neigh- 
bourliood,  but  as  yet  little  known  to  the  kingdom  gen- 
erally, had  the  courage  to  step  forward,  to  confront  the 
wliole  power  of  the  government,  and  take  on  liim- 
self  the  cost  and  the  risk  of  disputing  the  prerogative 
to  which  the  King  laid  claim.  The  case  was  argued 
before  the  judges  in  the  Exchequer  Chamber.  So 
strong  were  the  arguments  against  the  pretensions  of  the 
crown  that,  dependent  and  servile  as  the  judges  were, 
the  majority  against  Hampden  was  the  smallest  possi- 
ble. Still  there  was  a  majority.  The  interpreters  of 
tlie  law  had  pronounced  that  one  great  and  productive 
tax  might  be  imposed  by  the  royal  authority.  Went- 
worth  justly  observed  that  it  was  impossible  to  vindi- 
cate their  judgment  except  by  reasons  directly  leading 
to  a  conclusion  wliich  they  had  not  ventured  to  draw. 
If  money  might  legally  be  raised  without  the  consent 
of  Parliament  foi'  tlie  support  of  a  fleet,  it  was  not  easy 
to  deny  that  money  might,  without  consent  of  Parlia- 
ment, be  legally  raised  for  the  support  of  an  army. 

The  decision  of  the  judges  increased  the  irritation  of 
the  people.  A  century  earlier,  irritation  less  serious 
would  have  produced  a  general  rising.  But  discontent 
did  not  now  so  readily  as  in  an  earlier  ao;e  take  the  form 
of  rebellion.  The  nation  had  been  lono;  steadily  ad- 
vancing  in  Avealth  and  in  civilisation.  Since  the  groat 
northern  Earls  took  up  arms  against  Elizabeth  seventy 
years  had  elapsed  ;  and  during  those  seventy  years 
there  had  been  no  civil  war.  Never,  during  the  whole 
existence  of  the  English  nation,  had  so  long  a  period 
passed  without  intestine  hostilities.  Men  had  become 
accustomed  to  the  pursuits  of  peaceful  industry,  and, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  101 

exasperated  as  they  were,  hesitated  long  before  they 
drew  the  sword. 

This  was  the  conjuncture  at  wliich  the  liberties  of 
the  nation  were  in  the  greatest  peril.  The  opponents 
of  the  government  began  to  despair  of  the  destiny  of 
their  country  ;  and  many  looked  to  the  American  wil- 
derness as  the  only  asylum  in  which  they  could  enjoy 
civil  and  spiritual  freedom.  There  a  few  resolute  Puri- 
tans, who,  in  the  cause  of  their  religion,  feared  neither 
the  rage  of  the  ocean  nor  the  hardships  of  uncivilised 
hfe,  neither  the  fangs  of  savao;e  beasts  nor  the  toma- 
hawks  of  more  savage  men,  had  built,  amidst  the  pri- 
meval forest,  villages  which  are  now  great  and  opulent 
cities,  but  which  have,  through  every  change,  retained 
some  trace  of  the  character  derived  from  their  founders. 
The  government  regarded  these  infant  colonies  with 
aversion,  and  attempted  violently  to  stop  the  stream  of 
emigration,  but  could  not  prevent  the  popiilation  of 
New  England  from  being  largely  recruited  by  stout- 
hearted and  Godfearing  men  from  every  part  of  the 
old  England.  And  now  Wentworth  exulted  in  the 
near  prospect  of  Thorough.  A  few  years  might  prob- 
ably suffice  for  the  execution  of  his  great  design.  If 
strict  economy  were  observed,  if  all  collision  with  for- 
eign powers  were  carefully  avoided,  the  debts  of  the 
crown  would  be  cleared  off:  there  would  be  funds  avail- 
able for  the  support  of  a  large  military  force  ;  and  that 
fox'ce  would  soon  break  the  refractory  spirit  of  the  nation. 

At  this  crisis  an  act  of  insane  bij^otry  suddenly 
chanoed    the    whole    face    of   public    affairs.    Resisunre  to 

,.  .  ,  the  I.iturtcy 

Had  the  King  been  wise,  he  would  have  in  scotiiuid. 
pursued  a  cautious  and  soothing  policy  towards  Scot- 
land till  he  w;is  master  in  the  South.  For  Scotland 
was  of  all  his  kinirdoms  that  in  wliich  there  was  the 


102  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

greatest  risk  that  a  spark  might  produce  a  flame,  and 
that  a  flame  might  become  a  conflagration.  Constitu- 
tional  opposition,  indeed,  such  as  he  had  encountered 
at  Westminster,  he  had  not  to  appreliend  at  Edinburgh. 
Tlie  Parhament  of  his  northern  kingdom  was  a  very 
different  body  from  that  which  bore  the  same  name  in 
England.  It  was  ill  constituted;  it  was  little  consid- 
ered ;  and  it  had  never  imposed  any  serious  restraint 
on  any  of  his  predecessors.  The  three  Estates  sate  in 
one  house.  The  commissioners  of  the  burghs  w^ere 
considered  merely  as  retainers  of  the  great  nobles. 
No  act  could  be  introduced  till  it  had  been  approved 
by  the  Lords  of  Articles,  a  committee  which  was 
really,  though  not  in  form,  nominated  by  the  crown. 
But,  though  the  Scottish  Parliament  was  obsequious, 
the  Scottish  people  had  always  been  singularly  turbu- 
lent and  ungovernable.  They  had  butchered  their  first 
James  in  his  bedchamber :  they  had  repeatedly  arrayed 
themselves  in  arms  against  James  the  Second :  they 
had  slain  James  the  Third  on  the  field  of  battle  :  their 
disobedience  had  broken  the  heart  of  James  the  Fifth  : 
they  had  deposed  and  imprisoned  Mary :  they  had  led 
her  son  captive  ;  and  their  temper  was  still  as  intracta- 
ble as  ever.  Their  habits  were  rude  and  martial.  All 
along  the  southern  border,  and  all  along  the  line  be- 
tween the  highlands  and  the  lowlands,  raged  an  in- 
cessant predatory  war.  In  every  part  of  the  ccuntry 
men  were  accustomed  to  redress  their  wrongs  by  the 
strong  hand.  Whatever  loyalty  the  nation  had  an- 
ciently felt  to  the  Stuarts  had  cooled  during  their 
long  absence.  The  supreme  influence  over  the  public 
mind  was  divided  between  two  classes  of  malecontents, 
the  lords  of  the  soil  and  the  preachers  ;  lords  animated 
by  the  same  spirit  which  had  often  impelled  the  old 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  103 

Douglasses  to  witlistand  the  roval  house,  auJ  preach- 
ers  Avho  liad  inherited  the  republican  opinions  and  the 
nnconquerahle  spirit  of  Knox.  Both  the  national  and 
religious  feelings  of  the  population  had  been  wounded. 
All  orders  of  men  complained  that  their  country,  that 
country  which  had,  with  so  much  glory,  defended  her 
independence  against  the  ablest  and  bravest  Plantag- 
enets,  had,  through  the  instrumentality  of  her  native 
princes,  become  in  eflPect,  though  not  in  name,  a  prov- 
ince of  England.  In  no  part  of  Europe  had  the  Cal- 
vinistic  doctrine  and  discipline  taken  so  strong  a  hold 
on  the  ])ublic  mind.  The  Church  of  Rome  was  re- 
garded by  the  great  body  of  the  people  with  a  hatred 
which  miiiht  justly  be  called  ferocious  ;  and  the  Church 
of  England,  which  seemed  to  be  every  day  becoming 
more  and  more  like  the  Church  of  Rome,  was  an  object 
of  scarcely  less  aversion. 

The  government  had  lono-  wished  to  extend  the  An- 
glican  system  over  the  whole  island,  and  had  already, 
with  this  view,  made  several  changes  highly  distasteful 
to  ever}'  Presbyterian.  One  innovation,  however,  tlio 
most  hazardous  of  all,  because  it  was  directly  cognisa- 
ble by  the  senses  of  the  common  people,  had  not  yet 
been  attempted.  The  public  worship  of  God  was  still 
conducted  in  the  manner  accejitable  to  the  nation. 
Now,  however,  Charles  and  Laud  determined  to  force 
on  the  Scots  the  English  liturgy,  or  rather  a  liturgy 
which,  wherever  it  differed  ft-om  that  of  England,  dif- 
fered, in  the  judgment  of  all  I'igid  Protestants,  for  the 
worse. 

To  this  step,  taken  in  the  mere  wantonness  of  tyr- 
anny, and  in  criminal  ignorance  or  more  criminal  con- 
t(>mpt  of  public  feeling,  our  coinitry  owes  her  freedom. 
The  first  performance  of  the  foreign  ceremonies  pro- 


1C4  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

duced  a  riot.  The  riot  rapidly  became  a  revolution. 
Ambition,  patriotism,  fanaticism,  were  mingled  in  one 
headlono-  torrent.  The  whole  nation  was  in  arms. 
The  power  of  England  was  indeed,  as  appeared  some 
years  later,  sufficient  to  coerce  Scotland  :  but  a  large 
\>i\rt  of  the  English  people  sympathized  with  the  relic;- 
ious  feelings  of  the  insurgents ;  and  many  Englishmen 
who  had  no  scruple  about  antiphonies  and  genuflexions, 
altars  and  surplices,  saw  with  pleasure  the  progress  of 
a  rebellion  which  seemed  likely  to  confound  the  arbi- 
trary projects  of  the  court,  and  to  make  the  calhng  of 
a  Parliament  necessary. 

For  the  senseless  freak  which  had  produced  these 
effects  Wentworth  is  not  responsible.'  It  had,  in  fact, 
thrown  all  his  plans  into  confusion.  To  counsel  sub- 
mission, however,  was  not  in  his  nature.  An  attempt 
was  made  to  put  down  the  insurrection  by  the  sword : 
but  the  King's  military  means  and  military  talents  were 
unequal  to  the  task.  To  impose  fresh  taxes  on  Eng- 
land in  defiance  of  law  would,  at  this  conjuncture,  have 
A  Parliament  been  maducss.     No  resource  was  left  but  a 

called  and 

dissolved.  Parliament ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1640  a  Par- 
liament was  convoked. 

The  nation  had  been  put  into  good  humour  by  the 
prospect  of  seeing  constitutional  govei'nment  restored, 
and  grievances  redressed.  The  new  House  of  Com- 
mons was  more  temperate  and  more  respectful  to  the 
throne  than  any  which  had  sate  since  the  death  of 
Elizabeth.  The  moderation  of  this  assembly  has  been 
highly  extolled  by  the  most  distinguished  royalists,  and 
seems  to  have  caused  no  small  vexation  and  disappoint- 
ment to  the  chiefs  of  the  opposition :  but  it  was  the 
uniform  practice  of  Charles,  a  practice  equally  impol- 

1  See  his  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  dated  July  30.  1638. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  lOo 

itic  and  ungenerous,  to  refuse  all  compliance  with  the 
desires  of  liis  people,  till  those  desires  were  expressed 
in  a  menacing  tone.  As  soon  as  the  Commons  showed 
a  disposition  to  take  into  consideration  the  grievances 
under  which  the  country  had  suffered  during  eleven 
years,  the  King  dissolved  the  Parliament  with  every 
mark  of  displeasure. 

Between  the  dissolution  of  this  shortlived  assembly 
and  the  meeting  of  that  ever  memorable  body  known 
by  the  name  of  the  Long  Parliament,  intervened  a  few 
months,  during  which  the  yoke  was  j)ressed  down  more 
severely  than  ever  on  the  nation,  while  the  spirit  of  the 
nation  rose  up  more  angrily  than  ever  against  the  yoke. 
Members  of  the  House  of  Commons  were  questioned 
by  the  Privy  Council  touching  their  parliamentary 
conduct,  and  thrown  into  prison  for  refusing  to  reply. 
Shipmoney  was  levied  with  increased  rigour.  The 
Lord  Mayor  and  the  Sheriffs  of  London  were  threat- 
ened with  imprisonment  for  remissness  in  collecting  the 
payments.  Soldiers  were  enlisted  by  force.  Money 
for  their  support  was  exacted  from  their  counties.  Tor- 
ture, which  had  always  been  illegal,  and  which  had  re- 
cently been  declared  illegal  even  by  the  servile  judges 
of  that  age,  was  inflicted  for  the  last  time  in  England 
in  the  month  of  May,  1G40. 

Everything  now  dei)ended  on  the  event  of  the  King's 
military  o[)erations  against  the  Scots.  Among  his 
troops  there  was  little  of  that  feeling  which  sej>arates 
professional  soldiers  from  the  mass  of  a  nation,  and  at- 
taches them  to  their  leaders.  His  army,  composed  for 
the  most  part  of  recruits  who  regretted  the  plough  from 
which  they  had  been  violently  taken,  and  who  were 
imbued  with  the  religious  ^nd  political  sentiments  then 
prevalent    throughout  the    country,  was   more    formi* 


106  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

dable  to  liimself  than  to  the  enemy.  The  Scots,  en- 
couraged by  the  heads  of  the  EngHsh  opposition,  and 
feebly  resisted  by  tlie  Enghsh  forces,  marched  across 
the  Tweed  and  the  Tyne,  and  encamped  on  the  borders 
of  Yorksliire.  And  now  the  murmurs  of  discontent 
swelled  into  an  uproar  by  which  all  spirits  save  one 
were  overawed.  But  the  voice  of  Strafford  was  still 
for  Thorough ;  and  he,  even  in  this  extremity,  showed 
a  nature  so  cruel  and  despotic,  that  his  own  pikemen 
were  ready  to  tear  him  in  pieces. 

There  was  yet  one  last  expedient  w^hich,  as  the  King 
flattered  himself,  might  save  him  from  the  misery  of 
facino;  another  House  of  Commons.  To  the  House  of 
Lords  he  was  less  averse.  The  Bishops  were  devoted 
to  him  ;  and,  though  the  temporal  peers  were  gener- 
ally dissatisfied  with  his  administration,  they  were,  as  a 
class,  so  deeply  interested  in  the  maintenance  of  order, 
and  in  the  stability  of  ancient  institutions,  that  they 
were  not  likely  to  call  for  extensive  reforms.  Depart- 
ing from  the  uninterrupted  practice  of  centuries,  he 
called  a  Great  Council  consistino-  of  Lords  alone.  But 
the  Lords  were  too  prudent  to  assume  the  unconstitu- 
tional functions  with  which  he  wished  to  invest  them. 
Without  money,  without  credit,  without  authority  even 
in  his  own  camp,  he  yielded  to  the  pressure  of  neces- 
sity. The  Houses  were  convoked ;  and  the  elections 
proved  that,  since  the  spring,  the  distrust  and  hatred 
with  which  the  government  was  regarded  had  made 
fearful  progress. 

In  November  1640  met  that  renowned  Parliament 
The  Long  wlucli,  in  Spite  of  many  errors  and  disasters, 
Parliament.  -^  justly  entitled  to  the  reverence  and  grati- 
tude of  all  who,  in  any  part  of  the  world,  enjoy  the 
blessinos  of  constitutional  o-overnment. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  107 

Duriiif  the  year  which  followed,  no  very  important 
division  of  o])inion  appeared  in  the  Houses.  The  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  administration  had,  through  a  period 
of  near  twelve  years,  been  so  oppressive  and  so  uncon- 
stitutional that  even  those  classes  of  which  the  inclina- 
tions are  generally  on  the  side  of  order  and  authority 
wex-e  eager  to  promote  popular  reforms,  and  to  bring 
the  instruments  of  tvrannv  to  justice.  It  was  enacted 
that  no  interval  of  more  than  three  years  should  ever 
elapse  between  Parliament  and  Parliament,  and  tliat, 
if  writs  under  the  Great  Seal  were  not  issued  at  the 
proper  time,  the  returning  officers  should,  without  such 
writs,  call  the  constituent  bodies  together  for  the  choice 
of  representatives.  The  Star  Chamber,  the  High  Com- 
mission, the  Council  of  York  were  swept  away.  Men 
who,  after  suffering  cniel  mutilations,  had  been  con- 
fined hi  remote  dungeons,  regained  their  liberty.  On 
the  chief  ministers  of  the  crown  the  vengeance  of  the 
nation  was  unsparingly  Avreaked.  The  Lord  Keeper, 
the  Primate,  the  Lord  Lieutenant  were  impeached. 
Finch  saved  himself  by  flight.  Laud  was  flung  into 
tiie  Tower,  Straflbrd  was  put  to  death  by  act  of 
attainder.  On  the  same  day  on  which  this  act  passed, 
the  Kiuf'  o-ave  his  assent  to  a  law  bv  which  he  bound 
himself  not  to  adjourn,  prorogue,  or  dissolve  the  exist- 
hm  Parliament  without  its  own  consent. 

After  ten  months  of  assiduous  toil,  the  Houses,  in 
September  1641,  adjourned  for  a  short  vacation,  and 
the  King  visited  Scotland.  He  with  difficulty  pacified 
that  kingdom  by  consenting  not  only  to  relinquish  his 
plans  of  ecclesiastical  reform,  but  even  to  pass,  with  a 
very  bad  grace,  an  act  declaring  that  episcopacy  was 
contrary  to  t)ic  word  of  God. 


108  HISTORY   OP   EN(?LAND,  [Ch.  L 

The  recess  of  the  Eno;hsh  Parliament  lasted  six 
First  appear-  weeks.     The  day  on  which  the   Houses  met 

anee  of  the  .       .  pi  i      i  i  i        • 

two  great       apaui  IS  One  of  tiie  most  remarkable  epochs  m 

English  par-       ^  i  i  i  i 

ties.  our  history,     t  rom  that  day  dates  tlie  corpo- 

rate existence  of  the  two  great  parties  which  have  ever 
since  alternately  governed  the  country.  In  one  sense, 
indeed,  the  distinction  which  then  became  obvious  had 
always  existed,  and  always  must  exist.  For  it  has  its 
origin  in  diversities  of  temper,  of  understanding,  and 
of  interest,  which  are  found  in  all  societies,  and  which 
will  be  found  till  the  human  mind  ceases  to  be  drawn 
in  opposite  directions  by  the  charm  of  habit  and  by  the 
charm  of  novelty.  Not  only  in  politics,  but  in  litera- 
ture, in  art,  in  science,  in  surgery  and  mechanics,  in 
navigation  and  agriculture,  nay,  even  in  mathematics, 
we  find  this  distinction.  Everywhere  there  is  a  class 
of  men  who  cling  with  fondness  to  whatever  is  ancient, 
and  who,  even  when  convinced  by  overpowering  rea- 
sons that  innovation  would  be  beneficial,  consent  to  it 
with  mau}^  misgivings  and  forebodings.  We  find  also 
everywhere  another  class  of  men  sanguine  in  hope,  bold 
in  speculation,  always  pressing  forward,  quick  to  discern 
the  imperfections  of  whatever  exists,  disposed  to  think 
lightly  of  the  risks  and  inconveniences  which  attend 
improvements,  and  disposed  to  give  every  change  credit 
for  being  an  improvement.  In  the  sentiments  of  both 
classes  there  is  something  to  approve.  But  of  both  the 
best  specimens  will  be  found  not  far  from  the  common 
frontier.  The  extreme  section  of  one  class  consists  of 
bigoted  dotards  :  the  extreme  section  of  the  other  con- 
sists of  shallow  and  reckless  empirics. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  our  very  first  Parlia- 
ments might  have  been  discerned  a  body  of  members 
anxious  to  preserve,  and  a  body  eager  to  reform.     But, 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  109 

while  the  sessions  of  the  legislature  were  short,  these 
bodies  did  not  take  definite  and  permanent  forms,  array 
themselves  under  recognised  leaders,  or  assume  distin- 
guishing names,  badges,  and  war  cries.  During  the 
Hrst  months  of  the  Long  Parliament,  the  indignation 
excited  by  many  years  of  lawless  oppression  was  so 
strono-  and  general  that  the  House  of  Commons  acted 
as  one  man.  Abuse  after  abuse  disappeared  without 
a  struggle.  If  a  small  minority  of  the  representative 
body  wished  to  retain  the  Star  Chamber  and  the  High 
Commission,  that  minority,  overawed  by  the  enthusiasm 
and  by  the  numerical  superiority  of  the  reformers,  con- 
tented itself  with  secretly  regretting  institutions  which 
could  not,  with  any  hope  of  success,  be  openly  defended. 
At  a  later  period  the  Royalists  found  it  convenient  to 
antedate  the  separation  between  themselves  and  their 
o])ponenrts,  and  to  attribute  the  Act  which  restrained 
the  King  from  dissolving  or  proroguing  the  Parliament, 
the  Triennial  Act,  the  impeachment  of  the  ministers, 
and  the  attainder  of  Strafford,  to  the  fiction  which  af- 
terwards made  war  on  the  King.  But  no  artifice 
could  be  more  disingenuous.  Eveiy  one  of  those 
strong  measures  was  actively  promoted  by  the  men 
who  were  afterwards  foremost  among  the  Cavaliers. 
No  republican  spoke  of  the  long  mi.^government  of 
Charles  more  severely  than  Colepepper.  The  most 
remarkable  s|)eech  in  favour  of  the  Triennial  Bill  was 
made  by  Digby.  The  impeachment  of  the  Lord  Keeper 
was  moved  by  Falkland.  The  demand  that  tlie  Lord 
Lieutenant  should  be  kept  close  prisoner  was  made  at 
the  bar  of  the  Lords  by  Hyde.  Not  till  the  law  at- 
tainting Strafford  was  proposed  did  the  signs  of  serious 
disunion  become  visible.  Even  against  that  law,  a  law 
which  nothing  but  extreme  necessity  could  justify,  only 


no  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Cii.  I 

about  sixty  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  voted. 
It  is  certain  that  Hyde  was  not  in  the  minority,  and 
that  Falkland  not  only  voted  with  the  majority,  but 
spoke  strongly  for  the  bill.  Even  the  few  who  enter- 
tained a  scruple  about  inflicting  death  by  a  retrospective 
enactment  thought  it  necessary  to  express  the  utmost 
abhorrence  of  Strafford's  character  and  administration. 

But  under  this  apparent  concord  a  great  schism  was 
latent ;  and  when,  in  October  1(341,  the  Parliament 
reassembled  after  a  short  recess,  two  hostile  parties, 
essentially  the  same  with  those  which,  under  different 
names,  have  ever  since  contended,  and  are  still  con- 
tending, for  the  direction  of  public  affairs,  appeared 
confronting  each  other.  During  some  years  they  were 
designated  as  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads.  Thev  were 
subsequently  called  Tories  and  Whigs  ;  nor  does  it 
seem  that  these  appellations  are  likely  soon  to  become 
obsolete. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  compose  a  lampoon  or  a 
panegyric  on  either  of  these  renowned  factions.  For 
no  man  not  utterly  destitute  of  judgment  and  candour 
will  deny  that  there  are  many  deep  stains  on  the  fame 
of  the  party  to  M^hich  he  belongs,  or  that  the  ])arty  to 
which  he  is  opposed  may  justly  boast  of  many  illus- 
trious names,  Of  many  heroic  actions,  and  of  many 
great  services  rendered  to  the  State.  The  truth  is 
that,  though  both  parties  have  often  seriously  erred, 
England  could  have  spared  neither.  If,  in  her  institu- 
tions, freedom  and  order,  the  advantaoes  arisino;  fi-om 
innovation  and  the  advantages  arising  fi*om  prescrip- 
tion, have  been  combined  to  an  extent  elsewhere  un- 
known, we  may  attribute  this  happy  peculiarity  to  the 
strenuous  conflicts  and  alternate  victories  of  two  rival 
confederacies  of  statesmen,  a  confederacy  zealous  for 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  Ill 

autlioritj  and  antiquity,  and  a  confederacy  zealous  for 
liberty  and  progress. 

It  ouc-lit  to  be  remembered  that  the  difference  be- 
tween  the  two  great  sections  of  English  politicians  has 
always  been  a  difference  ratlier  of  degree  than  of  prin- 
ciple. There  were  certain  limits  on  the  right  and  on 
the  left,  which  were  very  rarely  overstepped.  A  few 
enthusiasts  on  one  side  were  ready  to  lay  all  our  laws 
and  franchises  at  the  feet  of  our  Kings.  A  few  enthu- 
siasts on  the  other  side  were  bent  on  pursuing,  through 
endless  civil  troubles,  their  darling  phantom  of  a  repub- 
lic. But  the  great  majorit}'  of  those  who  fought  for  the 
crown  were  averse  to  despotism  ;  and  the  great  major- 
ity of  the  champions  of  popular  rights  were  averse  to 
anarchy.  Twice,  in  the  course  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  two  parties  suspended  their  dissensions,  and 
united  their  strength  in  a  common  cause.  Their  first 
coalition  restored  hereditarv  numarchv.  Their  second 
coalition  rescued  constitutional  freedom. 

It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  these  two  parties  have 
never  been  the  whole  nation,  nay,  that  they  have 
never,  taken  together,  made  up  a  majority  of  the  na- 
tion, lietween  them  has  always  been  a  great  mass, 
which  has  not  steadfastly  adhered  to  either,  whicli  has 
sometimes  remained  inertly  neutral,  and  has  sometimes 
oscillated  to  and  fro.  That  mass  has  more  than  once 
passed  in  a  few  years  from  one  extreme  to  the  other, 
and  back  again.  Sometimes  it  has  changed  sides, 
merely  because  it  was  tired  of  supporting  the  same 
men,  sometimes  because  it  was  dismayed  by  its  own 
excesses,  sometimes  because  it  had  expected  impossi- 
bilities, and  had  been  disaiipointcd.  But,  whenever  it 
has  leaned  with  its  whole  weight  in  either  direction, 
that  wcitdit  has,   fur  the  time,   been  irresistible. 


112  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Cii.  I. 

When  the  rival  parties  first  appeared  in  a  distinct 
form,  they  seemed  to  be  not  unequally  matched.  On 
the  side  of  the  government  was  a  large  majoiity  of  the 
nobles,  and  of  those  opulent  and  well  descended  gentle- 
men to  whom  nothing  was  wanting  of  nobility  but  the 
name.  These,  with  the  dependents  whose  support 
they  could  command,  were  no  small  power  in  the  state. 
On  the  same  side  were  the  great  body  of  the  clergy, 
both  the  Universities,  and  all  those  laymen  who  were 
strongly  attached  to  episcopal  government  and  to  the 
Anglican  ritual.  These  respectable  classes  found  them- 
selves in  the  company  of  some  allies  much  less  decoi'ous 
than  themselves.  The  Puritan  austerity  drove  to  the 
King's  faction  all  who  made  pleasure  their  business, 
who  affected  gallantry,  splendour  of  dress,  or  taste  in 
the  lighter  arts.  With  these  went  all  who  live  by 
amusing  the  leisure  of  others,  from  the  painter  and  the 
comic  poet,  down  to  the  ropedancer  and  the  Merry 
Andrew.  For  these  artists  well  knew  that  they  might 
thrive  under  a  superb  and  luxurious  despotism,  but 
must  starve  under  the  rigid  rule  of  the  px-ecisians.  In 
the  same  interest  were  the  Roman  Catholics  to  a  man. 
The  Queen,  a  daughter  of  France,  was  of  their  own 
faith.  Her  husband  was  known  to  be  strongly  attached 
to  her,  and  not  a  little  in  awe  of  her.  Though  un- 
doubtedly a  Protestant  on  conviction,  he  regarded  the 
professors  of  the  old  religion  with  no  ill  will,  and  would 
gladly  have  granted  them  a  much  larger  toleration  than 
he  was  disposed  to  concede  to  the  Presbyterians.  If 
the  opposition  obtained  the  mastery,  it  was  probable 
that  the  sanguinary  laws  enacted  against  Papists,  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  would  be  severely  enforced. 
The  Roman  Catholics  were  therefore  induced  by  the 
strongest  motives  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the   court. 


Ch.  I-l  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  113 

They  ill  general  acted  with  a  caution  Avliicli  brought 
on  them  the  reproach  of  cowardice  and  hd<e\varmness : 
but  it  is  probable  that,  in  maintaining  great  reserve, 
they  consulted  the  King's  interest  as  well  as  their  own. 
It  was  not  for  liis  service  that  they  should  be  conspicu- 
ous amono;  his  friends. 

The  main  strength  of  the  opposition  lay  among  the 
small  freeholders  in  the  country,  and  among  the  mer- 
chants and  shopkeepers  of  the  towns.  But  these  were 
headed  by  a  formidable  minority  of  the  aristocracy,  a 
minority  which  included  the  rich  and  powerful  Earls 
of  Northumberland,  Bedford,  Warwick,  Stamford,  and 
Essex,  and  several  other  Lords  of  great  wealth  and 
influence.  In  the  same  ranks  was  found  the  whole  body 
of  Protestant  Nonconformists,  and  most  of  those  mem- 
bers of  the  Established  Church  who  still  adhered  to  the 
Calvinistic  ()i)inions  which,  forty  years  before,  had  been 
generally  held  by  the  prelates  and  clergy.  The  mu- 
nicipal corporations  took,  Avith  few  excei)tions,  the  same 
side.  In  the  House  of  Commons  the  opposition  pre- 
ponderated, but  not  very  decidedly. 

Neither  party  wanted  strong  arguments  for  the 
course  which  it  was  disposed  to  take.  The  reasonings 
of  the  most  enlightened  Royalists  may  be  summed  up 
thus  :  —  "It  is  true  that  great  abuses  have  existed  ; 
but  they  have  been  redressed.  It  is  true  that  precious 
rights  have  been  invaded  ;  but  they  have  been  vindi- 
cated and  surrounded  with  new  securities.  The  sit- 
tings of  the  Estates  of  the  realm  liave  been,  in  defiance 
of  all  precedent  and  of  the  spirit  of  the  constitution, 
intermitted  during  eleven  years  ;  but  it  has  now  been 
provided  that  henceforth  three  years  shall  never  elapse 
without  a  Parliament.  The  Star  Chamber,  the  High 
Commission,  the  Council  of  York,  oppressed  and  plun- 

VOL.  I  8 


114  HISTORY   OF   l:NGLAKD,  [Ch.  L 

dered  us  ;  but  those  hateful  courts  have  now  ceased  to 
exist.  The  Loi-d  Lieutenant  aimed  at  establishino;  mih- 
taiy  despotism  ;  but  he  has  answered  for  his  treason 
with  his  head.  The  Primate  tainted  our  worship  witli 
Popish  rites,  and  punished  our  scruples  with  Popisn 
cruelty ;  but  lie  is  awaiting  in  the  Tower  tbe  judgment 
of  his  peers.  The  Lord  Keeper  sanctioned  a  plan,  by 
which  the  i  roperty  of  every  man  in  England  was 
placed  at  the  mercy  of  the  crown  :  but  he  has  been 
disgraced,  ruined,  and  compelled  to  take  reftige  in  a 
foreign  land.  The  ministers  of  tyranny  have  expiated 
their  crimes.  The  victims  of  tyranny  have  been  com- 
pensated for  their  suffei-ings.  It  would  therefore  be 
most  unwise  to  persevere  further  in  that  course  which 
was  justifiable  and  necessary  when  we  first  met,  after 
a  long  interval,  and  found  the  whole  administraaon 
one  mass  of  abuses.  It  is  time  to  take  heed  thai  we 
do  not  so  pursue  our  victory  over  despotism  as  to  lan 
into  anarchy.  It  was  not  in  our  power  to  overtx^rn 
the  bad  institutions  which  lately  afflicted  our  country, 
without  shocks  which  have  loosened  the  foundations 
of  government.  Now  that  those  institutions  have  fallen 
we  must  hasten  to  prop  the  edifice  which  it  was  lately 
our  duty  to  batter.  Henceforth  it  will  be  our  wisdom 
to  look  with  jealousy  on  schemes  of  innovation,  and  to 
guard  from  encroachment  all  the  prerogatives  with 
which  the  law  has,  for  the  public  good,  armed  the 
sovereign." 

Such  were  the  views  of  those  men  of  wdiom  the 
excellent  Falkland  may  be  regarded  as  the  leader.  It 
w'as  contended  on  the  other  side  with  not  less  force,  by 
men  of  not  less  ability  and  virtue,  that  the  safety  which 
the  liberties  of  the  English  people  enjoyed  was  rather 
apparent  than  real,  and  tliat  the  arbitrary  projects  of 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  115 

the  court  would  be  resumed  as  soon  as  the  vio-ilance 
of  the  Commons  was  relaxed.  True  it  was,  —  such 
was  the  reasoning  of  Pym,  of  Hollis,  and  of  Hampden, 
—  that  many  good  laws  had  been  passed  :  but,  if  good 
laws  had  been  sufficient  to  restrain  the  King,  his  sub- 
jects would  have  had  little  reason  ever  to  complain  of 
his  administration.  The  recent  statutes  were  siu'ely 
not  of  more  authority  than  the  Great  Charter  or  the 
Petition  of  Right.  Yet  neither  the  Great  Charter, 
hallowed  by  the  veneration  of  four  centuries,  nor  the 
Petition  of  Right,  sanctioned,  after  mature  reflection, 
and  for  valuable  consideration,  by  Charles  himself,  had 
been  found  effectual  for  the  protection  of  the  people. 
If  once  the  check  of  fear  were  withdrawn,  if  once  the 
spirit  of  opposition  were  suffered  to  slumber,  all  the 
securities  for  Enolish  freedom  resolved  themselves  into 
a  single  one,  the  royal  word ;  and  it  had  been  proved 
by  a  long  and  severe  experience  that  the  royal  word 
could  not  be  trusted. 

The  two  parties  were  still  regarding  each  other  v\'ith 
cautious  hostility,  and  had  not  yet  measiU'ed  r^^^  ^^^^ 
their  strength,  when  news  arrived  which  in-  '^^•''^i'"^"- 
flamed  the  passions  and  confirmed  the  opinions  of  both. 
The  great  chieftains  of  Ulster,  who,  at  the  time  of  the 
accession  of  James,  had,  after  a  long  struggle,  submit- 
ted to  the  royal  authority,  had  not  long  brooked  the 
humiliation  of  dependence.  They  had  conspired  against 
the  English  government,  and  had  been  attainted  of 
treason.  Their  immense  domains  had  been  fori'eited 
to  the  crown,  and  had  soon  been  peojiled  by  thousands 
of  English  and  Scotch  emigrants.  The  new  settlers 
were,  in  civilisation  and  intelligence,  far  superior  to  the 
native  y)opulation,  and  sometimes  abused  their  superi- 
ority.      The  animosity  produced  by  ditference  of  race 


116  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

was  iiicreasecl  by  difference  of  religion.  Under  the 
iron  rule  of  Wentwortli,  scarcely  a  murmur  was  heard : 
but,  when  that  strong  pressure  was  withdrawn,  when 
Scotland  had  set  the  example  of  successful  resistance, 
when  England  was  distracted  by  internal  quarrels,  the 
smothered  rase  of  the  Irish  broke  forth  into  acts  of 
fearful  violence.  On  a  sudden,  the  aboriginal  popula- 
tion rose  on  the  colonists.  A  war  to  which  national 
and  theological  hatred  gave  a  character  of  peculiar 
ferocity  desolated  Ulster,  and  spread  to  the  neighbour- 
ing provinces.  The  castle  of  Dublin  was  scarcely 
thought  secure.  Every  post  brought  to  London  exag- 
gerated accounts  of  outrages  which,  without  any  ex- 
aggeration, were  sufficient  to  move  pity  and  horror. 
These  evil  tidings  roused  to  the  heio-ht  tlie  zeal  of  both 
the  great  parties  which  were  marshalled  against  each 
other  at  Westminster.  The  Royalists  maintained  that 
it  was  the  first  duty  of  every  good  Englishman  and 
Protestant,  at  such  a  crisis,  to  strengthen  the  hands  of 
the  sovereign.  To  the  opposition  it  seemed  that  there 
were  now  stronger  reasons  than  ever  for  thwarting  and 
restraining  him.  That  the  commonwealth  was  in  dan- 
ger was  undoubtedly  a  good  reason  for  giving  large 
powers  to  a  trustworthy  magistrate :  but  it  was  a  good 
reason  for  taking  away  powers  from  a  magistrate  who 
was  at  heart  a  public  enemy.  To  raise  a  gi*eat  army 
had  always  been  the  King's  first  object.  A  great  arm}' 
must  now  be  raised.  It  was  to  be  feared  that,  unless 
some  new  secmnties  were  devised,  the  forces  lev^ied  for 
the  reduction  of  Ireland  would  be  employed  against 
the  liberties  of  England.  Nor  was  this  all.  A  horrible 
suspicion,  unjust  indeed,  but  not  altogether  unnatural, 
had  arisen  in  many  minds.  The  Queen  was  an  avowed 
Roman  Catholic :   the  King  was  not  regarded  by  the 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION. 

Puritans,  whom  he  had  mercilessly  persecuted,  as  a 
sincere  Protestant ;  and  so  notorious  was  his  duplicity, 
that  there  was  no  treachery  of  vvhic^h  his  subjects  might 
not,  with  some  show  of  reason,  believe  him  capable.  It 
was  soon  whispered  that  the  rebellion  of  the  Roman 
('atholics  of  Ulster  was  part  of  a  vast  work  of  darkness 
which  had  been  planned  at  Whitehall. 

After  some  weeks  of  prelude,  the  first  great  parlia- 
mentaiy  conflict  between  the  parties  which  Theremon- 
have  ever  since  contended,  and  are  still  con- 
tending, for  the  government  of  the  nation,  took  place 
on  the  twenty -second  of  November  1641.  It  was 
moved  by  the  opposition,  that  the  House  of  Commons 
should  present  to  the  King  a  remonstrance,  enumerat- 
ing the  faults  of  his  administration  from  the  time  of 
his  accession,  and  expressing  the  distrust  with  which 
his  policy  was  still  regarded  by  his  people.  That  as- 
sembly, which  a  few  months  before  had  been  unani- 
mous in  calling  for  the  reform  of  abuses,  was  now  di- 
vided into  two  fierce  and  eager  factions  of  nearly  equal 
streno-th.  After  a  hot  debate  of  many  hours,  the  re- 
monstrance  was  carried  by  only  eleven  votes. 

The  result  of  this  struggle  was  highly  favourable  to 
the  conservative  party.  It  could  not  be  doubted  that 
only  some  great  indiscretion  could  prevent  them  fi'om 
shortly  obtaining  the  ])redominance  in  the  Lower  House. 
The  Upper  House  was  already  their  own.  Nothing 
was  wanting  to  insure  their  success,  but  that  the  King 
slumld,  in  all  his  conduct,  show  respect  for  the  laws  and 
scrupulous  good  faith  towards  his  subjects. 

His  first  measures  promised  well.  He  had,  it  seemed, 
at  last  discovered  that  an  entire  change  of  system  was 
necessary,  and  had  wisely  made  up  his  mind  to  what 
could  no  lonjxer  be  avoided.     He  declared  his  deter- 


118  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [C.H.  i 

mination  to  govern  in  harmony  with  tlie  Commons,  and,  1 

for  that  end,  to  call  to  his  councils  men  in  whose  talents 
and  character  the  Commons  might  place  confidence, 
Nor  was  the  selection  ill  made.  Falkland,  Hyde,  and 
Colepepper,  all  three  distinguished  hy  the  part  which 
they  had  taken  in  reforming  abuses  and  in  punishing 
evil  ministers,  were  invited  to  become  the  confidential 
advisers  of  the  crown,  and  were  solemnly  assured  by 
Charles  that  he  would  take  no  step  in  any  way  affect- 
ing the  Lower  House  of  Parliament  without  their 
privity. 

Had  he  kept  this  promise,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
tlie  reaction  which  was  already  in  progress  would  very 
soon  have  become  quite  as  strong  as  the  most  respect- 
able Royalists  would  have  desired.  Already  the  vio- 
lent members  of  the  opposition  had  begun  to  despair  of 
the  fortunes  of  their  party,  to  ti-emble  for  their  own 
safety,  and  to  talk  of  selling  their  estates  and  emigrat- 
ing to  America.  That  the  fair  prospects  which  had 
begun  to  open  before  the  King  were  suddenly  overcast, 
that  his  life  was  darkened  by  adversity,  and  at  length 
shortened  by  violence,  is  to  be  attributed  to  his  own 
faithlessness  and  contempt  of  law. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  he  detested  both  the  par- 
ties into  which  the  House  of  Commons  Avas  divided  ; 
nor  is ;  this  strange  ;  for  in  both  those  parties  the  love 
of  liberty  and  the  love  of  order  were  mingled,  though 
in  different  ])roportions.  The  advisers  whom  necessity 
had  compelled  him  to  call  round  him  were  by  no  means 
men  after  his  own  heart.  They  had  joined  in  con- 
demning his  tyranny,  in  abridging  his  power,  and  in 
punishing  his  instruments.  They  were  now  indeed  pre- 
pared to  defend  in  a  strictly  legal  way  his  strictly  leo;al 
prerogative  ;  but  they  would  have  recoiled  with  hor 


Cif.  I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  119 

ror  from  tlie  tlionglit  of  reviving  Weritwortli's  projects 
of  Thorough.  They  were,  tlierefore,  in  the  King's 
opinion,  traitors  who  differed  only  in  the  degree  of  their 
seditious  mah'gnity  from  Pym  and  Hampden. 

He  accordingly,  a  few  days  after  he  had  promised 
tlie  chiefs  of  the  constitutional  Royalists  that  jn,pgacb. 
no  step  of  importance  should  be  taken  with-  g^'g^'nf/i^^® 
out  their  knowledge,  formed  a  resolution  the  ^^'^■ 
most  momentous  of  his  whole  life,  carefully  concealed  that 
resolution  from  them,  and  executed  it  in  a  manner  which 
overwhelmed  them  with  shame  and  dismay.     He  sent 
the  Attorney  General  to  im])each  Pym,  Hollis,  Hamp- 
den, and  other  members  of  the  House  of  Connnons  of 
liiiih  treason  at  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords.     Not 
content  with  this  flagrant  violation  of  the  Great  Charter 
and  of  the  uninterrupted  practice  of  centuries,  he  went 
in  person,  accompanied  by  armed  men,  to  seize  the  lead- 
ers of  the  opposition  within  the  walls  of  Parliament. 

The  attempt  failed.  The  accused  members  had  left 
the  House  a  short  time  before  Charles  entered  it.  A 
sudden  and  violent  revulsion  of  feeling,  both  in  the 
Parliament  and  in  the  coi^ntry,  followed.  The  most 
favourable  view  that  has  ever  bden  taken  of  the  King's 
conduct  on  this  occasion  by  his  most  partial  advocates 
is  that  he  had  weakly  suffered  himself  to  be  hurried 
into  a  gross  indiscretion  by  the  evil  counsels  of  his  wife 
aTid  of  his  courtiers.  But  the  general  A'oice  loudly 
charged  him  with  far  deeper  guilt.  At  the  very  mo- 
ment at  which  his  subjects,  after  a  long  estrangement 
produced  by  his  maladministration,  were  returning  to 
him  with  feelings  of  confidence  and  affection,  he  had 
aimed  a  deadly  bloAv  at  all  their  dearest  rights,  at  the 
privileges  of  Parliament,  at  the  very  princi])lc  of  trial 
by  jury.     He  had  shown  that  he  considered  opposition 


120  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

to  his  arbitrary  designs  as  a  crime  to  be  expiated  only 
by  blood.  He  had  broken  faith,  not  only  with  his 
Great  Council  and  with  his  people,  but  with  his  own 
adherents.  He  had  done  what,  but  for  an  unforeseen 
accident,  would  probably  have  produced  a  bloody  con- 
flict round  the  Speaker's  chair.  Those  who  had  tlie 
chief  sway  in  the  Lower  House  now  felt  that  not  only 
their  power  and  popularity,  but  their  lands  and  their 
necks,  were  staked  on  the  event  of  the  struffo-le  in  Avhich 
they  were  engaged.  The  flagging  zeal  of  the  party 
opposed  to  the  court  revived  in  an  instant.  During  the 
night  which  followed  the  outrao;e  the  whole  Citv  of 
London  was  in  arms.  In  a  few  hours  the  roads  lead- 
ing to  the  capital  were  covered  with  multitudes  of  yeo- 
men spurring  hard  to  Westminster  with  the  badges  of 
the  parliamentary  cause  in  their  hats.  In  the  House 
of  Commons  the  opposition  became  at  once  irresistible, 
and  carried,  by  more  than  two  votes  to  one,  resolutions 
of  unprecedented  violence.  Strong  bodies  of  the  train- 
bands, regularly  relieved,  mounted  guard  round  West- 
minster Hall.  The  gates  of  the  King's  palace  were 
daily  besieged  by  a  furious  multitude  whose  taunts  and 
execrations  were  heard  even  in  the  presence  chamber, 
and  who  could  scarcely  be  kept  out  of  the  royal  apart- 
ments by  the  gentlemen  of  the  household.  Had  Charles 
remained  much  longer  in  his  stormy  capital,  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  Commons  would  have  found  a  plea  for 
making  him,  under  outward  forms  of  respect,  a  state 
prisoner. 

He  quitted  London,  never  to  return  till  the  day  of  a 
Departure  of  tcrHble  aud  memorable  reckoning  had  arrived. 

Charles  from  .      ,  ,  i  •    i  ^  •     i 

London.  A  negotiation  began  which  occupied  many 
months.  Accusations  and  recriminations  passed  back- 
ward and  forward  between  the  contending  parties.    AD 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  121 

accommodation  had  become  impossible.  The  sure  pun- 
ishment which  waits  on  habitual  perfidy  had  at  length 
overtaken  the  King.  It  was  to  no  purpose  that  he  now 
pawned  his  royal  word,  and  invoked  heaven  to  witness 
the  sincerity  of  his  professions.  The  distrust  with  wdiich 
his  adversaries  regarded  him  was  not  to  be  removed  by 
oaths  or  treaties.  They  were  convinced  that  they  could 
be  safe  only  when  he  was  utterly  helpless.  Their  de- 
mand, therefore,  was,  that  he  should  surrender,  not 
only  those  prerogatives  which  he  had  usurped  in  viola- 
tion of  ancient  laws  and  of  his  own  recent  promises,  but 
also  other  prerogatives  which  the  English  Kings  had 
possessed  from  time  immemorial,  and  continue  to  pos- 
sess at  the  present  day.  No  minister  must  be  appointed, 
no  peer  created  without  the  consent  of  the  Houses. 
Above  all,  the  sovereign  must  resign  that  su])reme  mil- 
itary authority  wdiich,  from  time  beyond  all  memory, 
liad  appertained  to  the  regal  office. 

That  Charles  would  comply  with  such  demands  while 
he  had  any  means  of  resistance  was  not  to  be  expected. 
Yet  it  will  be  difficult  to  show  that  the  Houses  could 
safely  have  exacted  less.  They  were  truly  in  a  most 
embarrassing  position.  The  great  majorit}'  of  the  na- 
tion was  firmly  attached  to  hereditary  monarchy.  Those 
who  held  republican  opinions  were  as  yet  few,  and  did 
not  venture  to  s])eak  out.  It  was  therefore  impossible 
to  abolish  kingly  government.  Yet  it  was  ])lain  that 
no  confidence  could  be  placed  in  the  King.  It  would 
have  been  absurd  in  those  who  knew,  by  recent  proof, 
that  he  was  bent  on  destroying  them,  to  content  them- 
selves with  presenting  to  him  another  Petition  of  Right, 
and  receiving  from  him  fresh  ])r()mises  similar  to  those 
which  he  had  repeatedly  made  and  broken.  Nothing 
but  the  want  of  an  army  had  prevented  him  from  en- 


122  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Oh.  I. 

tirely  subverting  the  old  constitution  of  the  realm.  It 
was  now  necessary  to  levy  a  great  regular  army  for  the 
conquest  of  Ireland  ;  and  it  would  therefore  have  been 
mere  insanity  to  leave  him  in  possession  of  that  pleni- 
tude of  military  authority  which  his  ancestors  had  en- 
joyed. 

When  a  country  is  in  the  situation  in  which  England 
then  was,  when  the  kingly  office  is  regarded  with  love 
and  veneration,  but  the  person  who  fills  that  office  is 
hated  and  distrusted,  it  should  seem  that  the  course 
which  ought  to  be  taken  is  obvious.  The  dignity  of 
the  office  should  be  preserved  ;  the  person  should  be 
discarded.  Thus  our  ancestors  acted  in  1399  and  in 
1689.  Had  there  been,  in  1642,  any  man  occupying  u 
position  similar  to  that  which  Henry  of  Lancaster  occu- 
pied at  the  time  of  the  deposition  of  Richard  the  Sec- 
ond, and  which  William  of  Orange  occupied  at  the 
time  of  the  deposition  of  James  the  Second,  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  Houses  would  have  changed  the  dynasty, 
and  would  have  made  no  formal  change  in  the  consti- 
tution.  Tlie  new  King,  called  to  the  throne  by  their 
choice,  and  dependent  on  their  support,  would  have 
been  under  the  necessity  of  governing  in  conformity 
with  their  wishes  and  opinions.  But  there  was  no 
prince  of  the  blood  royal  in  the  parliamentary  party  ; 
and,  though  that  party  contained  many  men  of  high 
rank  and  many  men  of  eminent  ability,  there  was  none 
who  towered  so  conspicuously  above  the  rest  that  he 
could  be  proposed  as  a  candidate  for  the  crown.  As 
there  was  to  be  a  King,  and  as  no  new  King  was  to 
be  found,  it  was  necessary  to  leave  the  regal  title  to 
Charles.  Only  one  course,  therefore,  was  left :  and  that 
was  to  disjoin  the  regal  title  fi-om  the  regal  prerogatives. 

The  change  which  the  Houses  proposed  to  make  in 


C5h.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  123 

our  institutions,  though  it  seems  exorbitant,  when  dis- 
tinctly set  forth  and  digested  into  articles  of  capitula- 
tion, really  amounts  to  little  more  than  the  change 
which,  in  the  next  generation,  was  effected  by  the 
Revolution.  It  is  true  that,  at  the  Revolution,  the 
sovereign  was  not  deprived  by  law  of  the  power  of 
namuig  his  ministers  :  but  it  is  equally  true  that,  since 
the  Revolution,  no  minister  has  been  able  to  retain 
office  six  months  in  opposition  to  the  sense  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  It  is  true  that  the  sovereign  still  pos- 
sesses the  power  of  creating  peers,  and  the  more  im- 
portant power  of  the  sword  :  but  it  is  equally  true  that 
in  the  exercise  of  these  powers  the  sovereign  has,  ever 
since  the  Revolution,  been  guided  by  advisers  who  pos- 
sess the  confidence  of  the  representatives  of  the  nation. 
In  fact,  the  leaders  of  the  Roundhead  party  in  1642, 
and  the  statesmen  who,  about  half  a  century  later, 
effected  the  Revolution,  had  exactly  the  same  object  in 
view.  That  object  was  to  terminate  the  contest  be- 
tween the  crown  and  the  Parliament,  by  giving  to  the 
Parliament  a  supreme  control  over  the  executive  ad- 
ministration. The  statesmen  of  the  Revolution  effected 
this  indirectly  by  changing  the  dynasty.  The  Round- 
heads of  1G42,  being  unable  to  change  the  dynasty, 
were  compelled  to  take  a  direct  course  towards  their 
end. 

We  cannot,  however,  wonder  that  the  demands  of 
the  opposition,  importing  as  they  did  a  complete  and 
foi-mal  transfer  to  the  Parliament  of  powers  which  hud 
always  belonged  to  the  Crown,  should  have  shocked 
that  great  party  of  which  the  characteristics  are  respect 
for  constituted  authority  and  dread  of  violent  innova- 
tion. That  party  had  recently  been  in  hojies  of  obtain- 
ing by  peaceable  means  the  ascendency  in  the  House 


124  fflSTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

of  Commons  ;  but  every  such  hope  had  been  bhghted. 
The  duphcity  of  Charles  had  made  his  old  enemies  ir- 
reconcileable,  had  driven  back  into  the  ranks  of  the  dis- 
affected a  crowd  of  moderate  men  who  were  in  the  very 
act  of  coming  over  to  his  side,  and  had  so  cruelly  mor- 
tified his  best  friends  that  they  had  for  a  time  stood 
aloof  in  silent  shame  and  resentment.  Now,  however, 
the  constitutional  Royalists  were  forced  to  make  their 
choice  between  two  dangers  ;  and  they  thought  it  their 
duty  rather  to  rally  round  a  prince  whose  past  conduct 
they  condemned,  and  whose  word  inspired  them  with 
little  confidence,  than  to  suffer  the  regal  ofiice  to  be 
degraded,  and  the  polity  of  the  realm  to  be  entirely 
remodelled.  With  such  feelin<is,  many  men  whose  vir- 
tues  and  abilities  would  have  done  honour  to  any  cause 
rano-ed  themselves  on  the  side  of  the  Kino;. 

In  August  1(342  tjie  sword  was  at  length  drawn ; 
Commence-    and  soou,  iu  almost  every  shire  of  the  kinor- 

menf,  ofthe  i  -i  •  • 

civil  war.  dom,  two  hostile  factions  appeared  in  arms 
against  each  other.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  Avhich  of  the 
contending  parties  was  at  first  the  more  formidable. 
The  Houses  commanded  London  and  the  counties 
round  London,  the  fleet,  the  navigation  of  the  Thames, 
and  most  of  the  large  towns  and  seaports.  They  had 
at  their  disposal  almost  all  the  military  stores  of  the 
kingdom,  and  were  able  to  raise  duties,  both  on  goods 
imported  from  foreign  countries,  and  on  some  important 
products  of  domestic  industry.  The- King  was  ill  pro- 
vided with  artillery  and  ammunition.  The  taxes  which 
he  laid  on  the  rural  districts  occupied  by  his  troops  pro- 
duced, it  is  probable,  a  sum  far  less  than  that  which  the 
Parliament  drew  from  the  city  of  London  alone.  He 
rehed,  indeed,  chiefly,  for  pecuniary  aid,  on  the  munifi- 
cence of  his  opulent  adherents.     Many  of  these  mort- 


Ch.  1.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  125 

gaged  their  land,  pawned  their  jewels,  and  broke  up 
their  silver  chargers  and  christening  bowls,  in  order  to 
assist  him.  But  experience  has  fully  proved  that  the 
voluntary  liberality  of  individuals,  even  in  times  of  the 
greatest  excitement,  is  a  poor  financial  resource  when 
compared  with  severe  and  methodical  taxation,  which 
presses  on  the  willing  and  unwilling  alike. 

Charles,  however,  had  one  advantage,  which,  if  he 
had  used  it  well,  would  have  more  than  compensated 
for  the  want  of  stores  and  money,  and  which,  notwith- 
standing his  mismanagement,  gave  him,  during  some 
months,  a  superiority  in  the  war*.  His  troops  at  first 
fought  much  better  than  those  of  the  Parliament.  Both 
armies,  it  is  true,  were  almost  entirely  composed  of 
men  who  had  never  seen  a  field  of  battle.  Never- 
theless, the  difference  was  great.  The  parliamentary 
ranks  were  filled  with  hirelings  whom  want  and  idle- 
ness had  induced  to  enlist.  Hampden's  regiment  was 
regarded  as  one  of  the  best ;  and  even  Hampden's  regi- 
ment was  described  by  Cromwell  as  a  mere  rabble  of 
tapsters  and  serving  men  out  of  place.  The  royal 
army,  on  the  other  hand,  consisted  in  great  part  of 
gentlemen,  high  spirited,  ardent,  accustomed  to  consider 
dishonour  as  more  terrible  than  death,  accustomed  to 
fencing,  to  the  use  of  fire  arms,  to  bold  riding,  and 
to  manly  and  perilous  sport,  which  has  been  well 
called  the  image  of  war.  Such  gentlemen,  mounted 
on  their  favourite  horses,  and  commanding  little  bands, 
composed  of  their  younger  brothers,  grooms,  game- 
keepers and  huntsmen,  were,  from  the  very  first  day 
on  which  they  took  the  field,  qualified  to  play  their 
part  with  credit  in  a  skirmish.  The  steadiness,  the 
promi)t  obedience,  the  mechanical  ])recision  of  move- 
ment, which   are  Characteristic  of  the  regular  soldier, 


126  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch    I. 

these  gallant  volunteers  never  attained.  But  they 
were  at  first  opposed  to  enemies  as  undisciplined  as 
themselves,  and  far  less  active,  athletic,  and  daring. 
For  a  time,  therefore,  the  Cavaliers  were  successful  in 
almost  every  encounter. 

The  Houses  had  also  been  unfortunate  in  the  choice 
of  a  general.  The  rank  and  wealth  of  the  Earl  of 
Essex  made  him  one  of  the  most  important  members  of 
the  parliamentary  party.  He  had  borne  arms  on  the 
Continent  with  credit,  and,  when  the  war  began,  had 
as  high  a  military  reputation  as  any  man  in  the  coun- 
try. But  it  soon  appeared  that  he  was  unfit  for  the 
post  of  Commander  in  Chief.  He  had  little  energy  and 
no  originality.  The  methodical  tactics  which  he  had 
learned  in  the  war  of  the  Palatinate  did  not  save  him 
from  the  disgrace  of  being  surprised  and  baffled  by 
such  a  Captain  as  Rupert,  who  could  claim  no  higher 
fame  than  that  of  an  enterprising  partisan. 

Nor  were  the  officers  who  held  the  chief  commis- 
sions under  Essex  qualified  to  suj)]ily  what  was  want- 
ing in  him.  For  this,  indeed,  the  Houses  are  scarcely 
to  be  blamed.  In  a  country  which  had  not,  within  the 
memory  of  the  oldest  person  living,  made  Avar  on  a 
great  scale  by  land,  generals  of  tried  skill  and  valour 
were  not  to  be  found.  It  was  necessary,  therefore,  in 
the  first  instance,  to  trust  untried  men  ;  and  the  pref- 
erence was  naturally  given  to  men  distinguished  either 
by  their  station,  or  by  the  abilities  which  they  had  dis- 
played in  parliament.  In  scarcely  a  single  instance, 
however,  was  the  selection  fortunate.  Neither  the 
grandees  nor  the  orators  proved  good  soldiers.  The 
Earl  of  Stamford,  one  of  the  greatest  nobles  of  Eng- 
land, was  routed  by  the  Royalists  at  Stratton.  Na- 
thaniel Fiennes,  inferior  to  none  of  his  contemporaries 


I 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE    THE    RESTORATION.  127 

in  talents  for  civil  business,  disgraced  himself  by  the 
pusillanimous  surrender  of  Bristol.  Indeed,  of  all  the 
statesmen  who  at  this  juncture  accepted  high  military 
commands,  Hamj)den  alone  appears  to  have  carried 
mto  the  camp  the  ca]iacity  and  strength  of  mind  which 
had  made  him  eminent  in  ])olitic§. 

When  the  Avar  had  lasted  a  year,  the  advantage 
was    decidedly    Avith    the    Royalists.       They  succosses 

.■,,.,"  ^    .         of  the 

were  victorious,  botli  m  the  western  and  in  Rcyaitsts. 
the  northern  counties.  They  had  wrested  Bristol, 
the  second  city  in  the  kingdom,  from  the  Parliament. 
They  had  won  several  battles,  and  had  not  sustained 
a  sinirle  serious  or  ignominious  defeat.  Among  the 
Roundheads  adversity  had  begun  to  produce  dissension 
and  discontent.  The  Parliament  was  kept  in  alarm, 
sometimes  by  ])lots,  and  sometimes  by  riots.  It  was 
thought  necessary  to  fortify  London  against  the  royal 
army,  and  to  hang  some  disaffected  citizens  at  their 
own  doors.  Several  of  the  most  distinguished  ])eers 
who  had  hitherto  remained  at  Westminster  fled  to  the 
court  at  Oxlbi-d  ;  nor  can  it  be  doubted  that,  if  the 
o])erations  of  the  Cavaliers  had,  at  this  season,  been 
directed  by  a  sagacious  and  powerful  mind,  Charles 
would  soon  have  marched  in  triumph  to  Whitehall. 

But  the  King  sulFei*ed  the  auspicious  moment  to 
pass  aAvay ;  and  it  never  returned.  In  August  1643 
he  sate  down  before  the  city  of  Gloucester.  That 
city  Avas  defended  by  the  inhabitants  and  by  the  gar- 
rison, Avith  a  determinati(m  such  as  had  not,  since  the 
commencement  of  the  Avar,  been  shown  by  the  ad- 
herents of  the  Parliament.  The  emulation  of  London 
was  excited.  Tin?  trainbands  of  the  City  volunteered 
to  march  Avherever  their  services  might  be  required. 
A  great  force  Avas  speedily  collected,   and    began   to 


128  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [C't.  I. 

move  westward.  The  siege  of  Gloucester  was  raued. 
The  Royalists  in  every  part  of  the  kingdom  were  dis- 
heartened :  the  spirit  of  the  parliamentary  party  re- 
vived ;  and  the  apostate  Lords,  who  had  lately  fled 
from  Westminster  to  Oxford,  hastened  back  fi'om  Ox- 
ford to  Westminster. 

And  now  a  new  and  alarming  class  of  symptoms 
Rise  of  the  beo;an  to  appear  in  the  distempered  body 
denta.  politic.      1  here  had  been,  from  the  hrst,  m 

the  parliamentary  party,  some  men  whose  minds  were 
set  on  objects  from  which  the  majority  of  that  party 
would  have  shrunk  with  horror.  These  men  were, 
in  religion,  Independents.  They  conceived  that  every 
Christian  congregation  had,  under  Christ,  supreme 
jurisdiction  in  things  spiritual  ;  that  appeals  to  provin- 
cial and  national  synods  were  scarcely  less  unscriptural 
than  appeals  to  the  Court  of  Arches,  or  to  the  Vatican  ; 
and  that  Popery,  Prelacy,  and  Presbyterianism  were 
merely  three  forms  of  one  great  apostasy.  In  }»olitics 
the  Independents  were,  to  use  the  plu'ase  of  their  time, 
root  and  branch  men,  or,  to  use  the  kindred  i)hrase  of 
our  own  time,  radicals.  Not  content  with  limiting  the 
power  of  the  monarch,  they  were  desirous  to  erect  a 
commonwealth  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  English  polity. 
At  first  they  had  been  inconsiderable,  both  in  numbers 
and  in  weight  ;  but  before  the  war  had  lasted  two 
years  they  became,  not  indeed  the  largest,  but  the 
most  powerful  faction  in  the  country.  Some  of  the  old 
parliamentary  leaders  had  been  removed  by  death  ;  and 
others  had  forfeited  the  public  confidence.  Pym  had 
been  borne,  with  princely  honours,  to  a  grave  among 
the  Plantagenets.  Hampden  had  fallen,  as  became  him, 
>vhile  vainly  endeavouring,  by  his  hei'oic  example,  to 
inspire  his  followers  with  courage  to  face  the  fiery  cav- 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  129 

airy  of  Rupert.  Bedford  liad  been  untrue  to  the  cause. 
Northumberland  was  known  to  be  lukewarm.  Essex 
and  his  lieutenants  had  shown  little  vigour  and  ability 
in  the  conduct  of  military  operations:  At  such  a  con- 
juncture it  was  that  the  Independent  party,  ardent, 
resolute,  and  uncompromising,  began  to  raise  its  head, 
both  in  the  camp  and  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

The  soul  of  that  party  was  Oliver  Cromwell.  Bred 
to  peaceful  occupations,  he  had,  at  more  q^^^^. 
than  forty  years  of  age,  accepted  a  commis-  ^'■'''"^'■«i^- 
sion  in  the  parliamentary  army.  No  sooner  had  he 
become  a  soldier  than  he  discerned,  with  the  keen 
glance  of  genius,  what  Essex  and  men  like  Essex,  with 
all  their  experience,  were  unable  to  perceive.  He 
saw  precisely  where  the  strength  of  the  Royalists  lay, 
and  by  what  means  alone  that  strength  could  be  over- 
powered. He  saw  that  it  was  necessary  to  i-econstruct 
the  army  of  the  Parliament.  He  saw  also  that  there 
were  aiiundant  and  excellent  materials  for  the  purpose, 
materials  less  showy,  indeed,  but  more  solid,  than  those 
of  which  the  gallant  squadrons  of  the  King  were  com- 
posed. It  was  necessary  to  look  for  recruits  who  were 
not  mere  mercenaries,  for  recruits  of  decent  station  and 
grave  character,  fearing  God  and  zealous  for  public 
liberty.  With  such  men  he  filled  his  own  regiment, 
and,  while  he  subjected  them  to  a  discipline  more  rigid 
than  had  ever  before  been  known  in  England,  he  ad- 
ministered to  their  intellectual  and  moral  nature  stimu- 
lants of  fearful  ])otency. 

The  events  of  the  year  1644  fully  proved  the  supe- 
riority of  his  abilities.  In  the  south,  where  Essex  held 
the  command,  the  jiarliamentary  forces  underwent  a 
succession  of  sh.ameful  disasters;  but  in  the  north  the 
victory  of  Marston  Moor  fully  compensated  for  all  that 
vol,.  I.  y 


130  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  L 

had  been  lost  elsewhere.  That  victory  was  not  a  more 
serious  blow  to  the  Royalists  tlian  to  the  party  which 
had  hitherto  been  dominant  at  Westminster ;  for  it  was 
notorious  that  the*  day,  disgracefully  lost  by  the  Pres- 
byterians, had  been  retrieved  by  the  energy  of  Crom- 
well, and  by  the  steady  valour  of  the  warriors  whom 
he  had  trained. 

These  events  produced  the  Selfdenying  Ordinance 
Seifdenying  ^ud  the  ncw  modcl  of  the  army.  Under 
Ordinance.  (Jecorous  pretexts,  and  with  every  mark  of 
respect,  Essex  and  most  of  those  who  had  held  high 
posts  under  him  were  removed  ;  and  the  conduct 
of  the  war  was  intrusted  to  very  different  hands. 
Fairfax,  a  brave  soldier,  but  of  mean  understanding 
and  irresolute  temper,  was  the  nominal  Lord  General 
of  the  forces  ;  but  Cromwell  was  their  real  head. 

Cromwell  made  haste  to  organize  the  whole  army  on 
the  same  principles  on  which  he  had  organized  his  own 
regiment.  As  soon  as  this  process  was  complete,  the 
event  of  the  war  was  decided.  The  Cavaliers  had  now 
to  encounter  natural  courage  equal  to  their  own,  en- 
thusiasm stronger  than  their  own,  and  discipline  such 
as  was  utterly  wanting  to  them.  It  soon  became  a 
proverb  that  the  soldiers  of  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  were 
men  of  a  different  breed  from  the  soldiers  of  Essex. 
Victory  of      At  Nascbv  toolv  placc  the  first  great  encoun- 

the  Parlia-  */  i  o 

meut.  ter  between  the  Royalists  and  the  remodelled 

army  of  the  Houses.  The  victory  of  the  Roundheads 
was  complete  and  decisive.  It  was  followed  b}'-  other 
triumj^hs  in  rapid  succession.  In  a  few  months  the 
authorit}''  of  the  Parliament  was  fully  established  over 
the  whole  kingdom.  Charles  fled  to  the  Scots,  and 
was  by  them,  in  a  manner  which  did  not  much  exalt 
their  national  character,  delivered  up  to  his  English 
subjects. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  131 

While  tlie  event  of  the  war  was  still  doubtful,  the 
Houses  had  put  the  Primate  to  death,  had  interdicted, 
within  the  sphere  of  their  authority,  the  use  of  the 
Liturgy,  and  had  required  all  men  to  subscribe  that  re- 
nowned instrument  known  by  the  name  of  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant.  Covenanting  work,  as  it  was 
called,  went  on  fast.  Hundreds  of  thousands  affixed 
their  names  to  the  rolls,  and,  with  hands  lifted  up 
toward  heaven,  swore  to  endeavour,  without  respect 
of  persons,  the  extirpation  of  Popery  and  Prelacy, 
heresy  and  schism,  and  to  bring  to  public  trial  ami 
condign  punishment  all  who  should  hinder  the  refor- 
mation of  religion.  When  the  struggle  was  over, 
the  work  of  innovation  and  revenge  was  pushed  on 
with  still  greater  ardour.  The  ecclesiastical  polity  of 
the  kingdom  was  remodelled.  Most  of  the  old  clergy 
were  ejected  from  their  benefices.  Fines,  often  of 
ruinous  amount,  were  laid  on  the  Royalists,  already 
impoverished  by  large  aids  furnished  to  the  King. 
Many  estates  were  confiscated.  Many  proscribed 
Cavaliers  found  it  expedient  to  purchase,  at  an  enor- 
mous cost,  the  protection  of  eminent  members  of  the 
victorious  party.  Large  domains  belonging  to  the 
crown,  to  the  bishops,  and  to  the  chapters  were  seized, 
and  either  gi-anted  away  or  put  up  to  auction.  In  con- 
sequence of  these  spoliations,  a  great  part  of  the  soil  of 
England  was  at  once  ofiered  for  sale.  As  money  was 
scarce,  as  the  market  was  glutted,  as  the  title  was 
insecure,  and  as  the  awe  inspired  by  powerful  bid- 
ders prevented  free  competition,  the  prices  were  often 
merely  nominal.  Thus  many  old  and  honourable  fami- 
lies disappeai'ed  and  were  heard  of  no  more  ;  and  many 
new  men  rose  rapidly  to  affluence. 

But,  while  the  Houses  were  enH)lovino:  their  author- 
ity  thus,  it  suddenly  ]nissed  out  of  their  hands.     It  had 


132  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  I 

been  obtained  by  calling  into  existence  a  power  which 
could  not  be  controlled.  In  the  summer  of  1647,  about 
twelve  months  after  the  last  fortress  of  the  Cavaliers 
had  submitted  to  the  Parliament,  the  Parliament  was 
compelled  to  submit  to  its  own  soldiers. 

Thirteen  years  followed,  during  which  England  was, 
under  various  names  and  forms,  really  governed  by  the 
DominatioQ     sword.    Ncvcr  bcfove  that  time,  or  since  that 

and  character     . 

Of  the  army,  time,  was  the  civil  power  in  our  country  sub- 
jected to  military  dictation. 

The  army  which  now  became  supreme  in  the  State 
was  a^.  army  very  different  from  any  that  has  since 
been  seen  among  us.  At  present  the  pay  of  the  com- 
mon soldier  is  not  such  as  can  seduce  any  but  the 
humblest  class  of  English  labourers  from  their  callino;. 
A  barrier  almost  impassable  separates  him  from  the 
commissioned  officer.  The  great  majority  of  those 
who  rise  high  in  the  service  rise  by  purchase.  So 
numerous  and  extensive  are  the  remote  dependencies 
of  England,  that  every  man  who  enlists  in  the  line 
must  expect  to  pass  many  yeai's  in  exile,  and  some 
years  in  climates  unfavourable  to  the  health  and  vigour 
of  the  European  race.  The  army  of  the  Long  Parha- 
ment  was  raised  for  home  service.  The  pay  of  the 
private  soldier  was  much  above  the  wages  earned  by 
the  great  body  of  the  people  ;  and,  if  he  distinguished 
himself  by  intelligence  and  courage,  he  might  hope  to 
attain  high  commands.  The  ranks  were  accordingly 
composed  of  persons  superior  in  station  and  education 
to  the  multitude.  These  persons,  sober,  moral,  dili- 
gent, and  accustomed  to  reflect,  had  been  induced  to 
take  up  arms,  not  by  the  pressure  of  want,  not  by  the 
love  of  novelty  and  license,  not  by  the  arts  of  recruit- 
ing officers,  but  by  religious  and  political  zeal,  mingled 
with   the   desire   of   distinction  and   promotion.      Hie 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  V6<i 

boast  of  the  soldiers,  as  we  find  it  recorded  in  tlieir 
solemn  resolutions,  was,  that  they  had  not  been  forced 
into  the  service,  nor  had  enlisted  chiefly  for  the  sake 
of  lucre,  that  they  were  no  janissaries,  but  freeborn 
Englishmen,  who  had,  of  their  own  accord,  put  their 
lives  in  jeopardy  for  the  liberties  and  religion  of  Eng- 
land, and  whose  right  and  duty  it  was  to  watch  over 
the  welfare  of  the  nation  which  they  had  saved. 

A  force  thus  composed  might,  without  injury  to  its 
efficiency,  be  indulged  in  some  liberties  which,  if  al- 
lowed to  any  other  troops,  would  have  proved  subver- 
sive of  all  discipline.  In  general,  soldiers  who  should 
form  themselves  nito  political  clubs,  elect  delegates,  and 
pass  resolutions  on  high  questions  of  state,  would  soon 
break  loose  from  all  control,  would  cease  to  form  an 
army,  and  woukl  become  the  worst  and  most  dangerous 
of  mobs.  Nor  would  it  be  safe,  in  our  time;,  to  tolerate 
in  any  regiment  religious  meetings,  at  which  a  corporal 
versed  in  Scripture  should  lead  the  devotions  of  his  less 
gifted  colonel,  and  admonish  a  backsliding  major.  But 
such  was  the  intelligence,  the  gravity,  and  the  selfcom- 
mand  of  the  warriors  whom  Cromwell  had  trained,  that 
in  their  camp  a  ]K>litical  organization  and  a  religious 
organization  could  exist  without  destroying  military 
organization.  The  same  men,  who,  off  duty,  were 
noted  as  demagogues  and  Held  preachei's,  were  dis- 
tinguished by  steadiness,  by  the  spirit  of  order,  and 
by  ]n-om])t  obedience  on  watch,  on  drill,  and  on  the 
field  of  battle. 

In  war  this  stranfje  force  was  irresistible.  The 
stubborn  courage  characteristic  of  the  English  peoj)le 
was,  by  the  system  of  Cromwell,  at  once  regulated 
and  stimulated.  Other  leaders  have  maintained  order 
as  strict.  Other  leaders  have  insjiircd  their  followers 
with  zeal  as  ardent.     But  in  his  camp  alone  the  most 


1S4  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I, 

rigid  discipline  was  found  in  company  with  the  fiercest 
enthusiasm.  His  troops  moved  to  victory  with  the 
precision  of  machines,  while  burning  with  the  wildest 
fanaticism  of  Crusaders.  From  the  time  when  the 
army  was  remodelled  to  the  time  when  it  was  dis- 
banded, it  never  found,  either  in  the  British  islands  or 
on  the  Continent,  an  enemy  who  could  stand  its  onset. 
In  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Flanders,  the  Puritan 
warriors,  often  suiTounded  by  difficulties,  sometimes 
contending  against  threefold  odds,  not  only  never  failed 
to  conquer,  but  never  failed  to  destroy  and  break  in 
pieces  whatever  force  was  opposed  to  them.  They 
at  length  came  to  regard  the  day  of  battle  as  a  day 
of  certain  triumph,  and  marched  against  the  most 
renowned  battalions  of  Europe  with  disdainful  confi- 
dence. Turenne  was  startled  by  the  shout  of  stern 
exultation  with  which  his  English  allies  advanced  to 
the  combat,  and  expressed  the  delight  of  a  true  soldier, 
when  he  learned  that  it  was  ever  the  fashion  of  Crom- 
well's pikemen  to  rejoice  greatly  when  they  beheld  the 
enemy  ;  and  the  banished  Cavaliers  felt  an  emotion  of 
national  pride,  when  they  saw  a  brigade  of  their  coun- 
trymen, outnumbered  by  foes  and  abandoned  by  friends, 
drive  before  it  in  headlong  rout  the  finest  infantry  of 
Spain,  and  force  a  passage  into  a  counterscarp  which 
had  just  been  pronounced  impregnable  by  the  ablest 
of  the  Marshals  of  France. 

But  that  which  chiefly  distinguished  the  army  of 
Cromwell  from  other  armies  was  the  austere  morality 
and  the  fear  of  God  which  pervaded  all  ranks.  It  is 
acknoAvledged  by  the  most  zealous  Royalists  that,  in 
that  singular  camp,  no  oath  was  heard,  no  drunkenness 
^r  gambling  was  seen,  and  that,  during  the  long  domin- 
ion of  the  soldiery,  the  property  of  the  peaceable  citizen 
and  the  honour  of  woman  were  held  sacred.     If  out- 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  135 

rao;es  were  committed,  tliey  were  outi'ages  of  a  very 
dilierent  kind  from  those  of  which  a  victorious  army  is 
generally  guilty.  No  servant  girl  complained  of  the 
rough  gallantly  of  the  redcoats.  Not  an  ounce  of  plate 
was  taken  from  the  shops  of  the  goldsmiths.  But  a 
Pelagian  sermon,  or  a  window  on  which  the  Virgin  and 
Child  were  painted,  produced  in  the  Pvn-itan  ranks  an 
excitement  whicli  it  required  the  utmost  exertions  of 
the  officers  to  quell.  One  of  Cromwell's  chief  diffi- 
culties was  to  restrain  his  musketeers  and  dragoons 
from  invailing  by  main  force  the  puljnts  of  ministers 
whose  discourses,  to  use  the  language  of  that  time, 
were  not  savoury ;  and  too  many  of  our  cathedrals  still 
bear  the  marks  of  the  hatred  witli  which  those  stern 
spirits  regarded  every  vestige  of  Popery. 

To  keep  down  the  English  people  was  no  light  task 
even  for  that  army.     No  sooner  was  tlie  first  uisinKs 

_  _       ■  .11  Mg.iiiist  the 

pi'essure  of  military  tyranny  felt,  than  the  na-  military 

•^ ,  I'll  goveruuient 

tion,  unbroken  to  such  servitude,  began  to  suppressed. 
stru^sle  fiercely.  Insurrections  broke  out  even  in  those 
counties  which,  during  the  recent  war,  had  been  the 
most  submissive  to  tlie  Parliament.  Indeed,  the  Par- 
liament itsL'lf  abhorred  its  old  defenders  more  than  ita 
old  enemies,  and  was  desirous  to  come  to  terms  of  ac- 
commodation with  Charles  at  the  expense  of  the  troops. 
In  Scotland,  at  the  same  time,  a  coalition  was  formed 
between  the  Royalists  and  a  large  body  of  Presbyte- 
rians who  regarded  the  doctrines  of  the  Independents 
with  detestation.  At  length  the  storm  burst.  There 
were  risings  in  Norfolk,  Suffi)lk,  Essex,  Kent,  Wales. 
The  fleet  in  the  Thames  suddenly  hoisted  the  royal 
colours,  stood  out  to  sea,  and  menaced  the  southern 
coast.  A  o-reat  Scottish  force  crossed  the  frontier  and 
advanced  into  Lancashire.  It  might  well  be  suspected 
that  these  moveiiu'iits  were  contenipluted  with  secret 


136  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ck.  I. 

complacency  by  a  majority  both  of  the  Lords  and  of 
the  Commons. 

But  the  yoke  of  the  army  was  not  to  be  so  shaken  off. 
While  Fairfax  suppressed  the  risings  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  capital,  Oliver  routed  the  Welsh  insurgents, 
and,  leaving  their  castles  in  ruins,  marched  against  the 
Scots.  His  troops  were  few,  when  compared  with  the 
invaders ;  but  he  was  little  in  the  habit  of  counting  his 
enemies.  The  Scottish  army  was  utterly  destroyed. 
A  change  in  tha  Scottish  government  followed.  An 
administration,  hostile  to  the  King,  was  formed  at  Edin- 
burgh ;  and  Cromwell,  more  than  ever  the  darling  of 
his  soldiers,  returned  in  triumph  to  London. 

And  now  a  design,  to  which,  at  the  commencement 
Proceedings    of  the  civil  War,  no  man  would  have  dared  to 

against  the  u      i  i         i  •    i  i 

King.  allude,  and  which  was  not  less   mconsistent 

with  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant  than  with  the 
old  law  of  England,  besan  to  take  a  distinct  form.  The 
austere  warriors  who  ruled  the  nation  had,  durino;  some 
months,  meditated  a  fearful  vengeance  on  the  captive 
King.  When  and  how  the  scheme  originated  ;  whether 
it  sj)read  fi*om  the  general  to  the  ranks,  or  from  the  ranks 
to  the  general ;  whether  it  is  to  be  ascribed  to  policy 
using  fanaticism  as  a  tool,  or  to  fanaticism  bearing  down 
policy  with  headlong  impulse,  are  questions  which,  even 
at  this  day,  cannot  be  answered  with  perfect  confidence. 
It  seems,  however,  on  the  whole,  probable  that  he  who 
seemed  to  lead  was  really  forced  to  follow,  and  that,  on 
this  occasion,  as  on  another  great  occasion  a  few  years 
later,  he  sacrificed  his  own  judgment  and  his  own  in- 
clinations to  the  wishes  of  the  army.  For  the  power 
which  he  had  called  into  existence  was  a  power  which 
even  he  could  not  always  control ;  and,  that  he  might 
ordinarily  command,  it  was  necessary  that  he  shoidd 
sometimes  obey.     He  publicly  protested  tluvt  he  was  no 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  137 

mover  in  tlie  matter,  that  the  first  steps  had  been  taken 
without  liis  privity,  that  he  could  not  advise  the  Par- 
liament to  strike  the  blow,  but  that  he  submitted  his 
own  feelings  to  the  force  of  circumstances  which  seemed 
to  him  to  indicate  the  purposes  of  providence.  It  has 
been  the  flishion  to  consider  those  professions  as  instances 
of  the  hypocrisy  which  is  vulgarly  imputed  to  him.  But 
even  those  who  pronounce  him  a  hypocrite  will  scarcely 
venture  to  call  him  a  fool.  They  are  therefore  bound 
to  show  that  he  had  some  purpose  to  serve  by  secretly 
stimulating  the  army  to  take  that  course  which  he  did 
not  venture  openly  to  recommend.  It  Avould  be  absurd 
to  suppose  that  he,  who  was  never  by  his  respectable 
enemies  represented  as  wantonly  cruel  or  implacably 
vindictive,  would  have  taken  the  most  important  step  of 
his  life  under  the  influence  of  mere  malevolence.  He 
was  far  too  wise  a  man  not  to  know,  when  he  consented 
to  shed  that  august  blood,  that  he  was  doing  a  deed 
which  was  ine.\j)iable,  and  which  would  move  the  grief 
and  horror,  not  only  of  the  Royalists,  but  of  nine  tenths 
of  those  who  had  stood  by  the  rarliament.  Whatever 
visions  may  have  deluded  others,  he  was  assuredly 
dreaming  neither  of  a  republic  on  the  antique  pattern, 
nor  of  the  millemiial  reign  of  the  saints.  If  he  already 
aspired  to  be  himself  the  founder  of  a  new  dynasty,  it 
was  i)lain  that  Charles  the  First  was  a  less  formidable 
competitor  than  Charles  the  Second  would  be.  At  the 
moment  of  the  death  of  Charles  the  First  the  loyalty 
of  every  Cavalier  would  be  transferred,  unim])aii-ed,  to 
Charles  the  Second.  Charles  the  First  was  a  captive  ; 
Charles  the  Second  would  be  at  liberty.  Charles  the 
First  was  an  object  of  suspicion  and  dislike  to  a  large 
proportion  of  those  who  yet  shuddered  at  the  thought  of 
slaying  him  ;  Charles  the  Second  Avould  excite  all  the  in- 
terest which  belongs  to  distressed  youth  and  innocence. 


138  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  considerations  so  obvious, 
and  so  important,  escaped  the  most  profound  politician 
of  that  age.  The  truth  is  that  Cromwell  had,  at  one 
time,  meant  to  mediate  between  the  throne  and  the  Par- 
liament, and  to  reorganize  the  distracted  State  by  the 
power  of  tlie  sword,  under  the  sanction  of  the  royal 
name.  In  this  design  he  persisted  till  he  was  compelled 
to  abandon  it  by  the  refractory  temper  of  the  soldiers, 
and  by  the  incurable  duplicity  of  the  King.  A  party  in 
the  camp  began  to  clamour  for  the  head  of  the  traitor, 
who  was  for  treating  with  Agag.  Conspiracies  were 
formed.  Threats  of  impeach-ment  were  loudly  uttered. 
A  mutiny  broke  out,  which  all  the  vigour  and  resolu- 
tion of  Oliver  could  hardly  quell.  And  though,  by  a 
judicious  mixture  of  severity  and  kindness,  he  succeeded 
in  restoring  order,  he  saw  that  it  would  be  in  the  high- 
est degree  difficult  and  perilous  to  contend  against  the 
rage  of  warriors,  who  regarded  the  fallen  tvrant  as  their 
foe,  and  as  the  foe  of  their  God. 

At  the  same  time  it  became  more  evident  than  ever 
that  the  King  could  not  be  trusted.  The  vices  of 
Charles  had  grown  upon  him.  They  were,  indeed, 
vices  which  difficulties  and  perplexities  generally  bring 
out  in  the  strongest  light.  Cunning  is  the  natural  de- 
fence  of  the  weak.  A  prince,  therefore,  who  is  habitu- 
ally a  deceiver  when  at  the  height  of  power,  is  not  likely 
to  learn  frankness  in  the  midst  of  embarrassments  and 
distresses.  Charles  was  not  only  a  most  unscrupulous 
but  a  most  unlucky  dissembler.  There  never  was  a 
politician  to  whom  so  many  ft'auds  and  falsehoods  were 
brought  home  by  undeniable  evidence.  He  publicly 
recognised  the  Houses  at  Westminster  as  a  legal  Par- 
liament, and,  at  the  same  time,  made  a  private  minute 
in  council,  declaring  the  recognition  null.     He  publicly 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   EESTORATION.  139 

disclaimed  all  thought  of  calling  in  foreign  aid  against 
his  people :  he  privately  solicited  aid  from  France,  from 
Denmark,  and  from  Loraine.  He  publicly  denied  that 
he  employed  Papists  :  at  the  same  time  he  privately 
sent  to  his  generals  directions  to  employ  every  Papist 
that  would  serve.  He  publicly  took  the  sacrament  at 
Oxford,  as  a  pledge  that  he  never  would  even  connive 
at  Popeiy  :  he  privatel}^  assured  his  wife,  that  he  in- 
tended to  tolerate  Popery  in  England  ;  and  he  author- 
ised Lord  Glamorgan  to  promise  that  Popery  should 
be  established  in  Ireland.  Then  he  attempted  to  clear 
himself  at  his  agent's  expense.  Glamorgan  received,  in 
the  royal  handwriting,  reprimands  intended  to  be  read 
by  others,  and  eulogies  which  were  to  be  seen  only  by 
himself.  To  such  an  extent,  indeed,  had  insincerity 
now  tainted  the  King's  whole  nature,  that  his  most 
devoted  friends  could  not  refrain  from  complaining  to 
each  other,  with  bitter  grief  and  shame,  of  his  crooked 
politics.  His  defeats,  they  said,  gave  them  less  pain  than 
his  intrigues.  Since  he  had  been  a  prisoner,  there  was 
no  section  of  the  victorious  party  which  had  not  been 
the  object  both  of  his  flatteries  and  of  his  machinations  : 
but  never  was  he  more  unfortunate  than  when  he  at- 
tempted at  once  to  cajole  and  to  undermine  Cromwell. 
Cromwell  had  to  determine  whether  he  would  put  to 
hazard  the  attachment  of  his  party,  the  attachment  of 
his  army,  his  own  greatness,  nay  his  own  life,  in  an 
attempt,  which  would  probably  have  been  vain,  to  save 
a  prince  whom  no  engagement  could  bind.  With  many 
struggles  and  misgivings,  and  probably  not  without 
many  prayers,  the  decision  was  made.  Charles  was 
left  to  his  fate.  The  military  saints  resolved  that,  in 
defiance  of  the  old  laws  of  the  realm,  and  of  tlie  almost 
universal  sentiment  of  the  nation,  the  King  should  ex 


140  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

piate  his  crimes  with  his  blood.     He  for  a  time  expected 
a  death  hke  that  of  his  unhai)i)y  predecessors,  Edward 
the  Second  and  Richard  the  Second.     But  he  was  in 
no  danger  of  such  treason.     Tliose  who  had  him  in 
their  gripe   were  not  midnight  stabbers.     What  they 
did  they  did  in  order  that  it  miglit  be  a  spectacle  to 
heaven  and  earth,  and  tliat  it  might  be  held  in  ever- 
lasting remembrance.     They  enjoyed  keenly  the  very 
scandal  which  they  gave.     That  the  ancient  constitu- 
tion and  the  public  opinion  of  England  were  directly 
opposed  to  regicide  made  regicide  seem  strangely  fas- 
cinating to  a  party  bent  on  effecting  a  complete  po- 
litical and   social  revolution.     In   order  to  accomplish 
their  purpose,  it  was  necessary  that  they  should  first 
break  in  pieces  every  part  of  the   machinery  of  the 
government ;  and  this  necessity  Avas  rather  agreeable 
than  painful  to  them.     The  Commons  passed  a  vote 
tending  to  accommodation  with  the  Kino-.     The  soldiers 
excluded   the   majority  by  force.     The    Lords  unani- 
mously rejected  the  proposition  that  the  King  should 
be  brought  to  trial.     Their  house  was  instantly  closed. 
No  court,  knoAvn  to  the  law,  would  take  on  itself  the 
office  of  judging  the  fountain  of  justice.     A  revolution- 
ary tribunal  was  created.     That  tribunal  pronounced 
Charles  a  tyrant,  a  traitor,  a  murderer,  and  a  public 
His  execu-     enemy  ;   and  his  head  was  severed  from  his 
*""*•  shoulders  before  thousands   of  spectators,   in 

front  of  the  banqueting  hall  of  his  own  palace. 

In  no  long  time  it  became  manifest  that  those  politi- 
cal and  religious  zealots,  to  whom  this  deed  is  to  be 
ascribed,  had  committed,  not  only  a  crime,  but  an  error. 
They  had  given  to  a  prince,  hitherto  known  to  his  peo- 
ple chiefly  by  his  faults,  an  opportunity  of  displajnng, 
on  a  great  theatre,  before  the  eyes  of  all  nations  and  alJ 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE   RESTORATION.  141 

ages,  some  qualities  which  irresistil)ly  call  forth  the  ad- 
miration and  love  of  mankind,  the  high  spirit  of  a  gal- 
lant gentleman,  the  patience  and  meekness  of  a  penitent 
Christian.  Nay,  they  had  so  contri^^ed  their  revenge 
that  the  very  man  whose  whole  life  had  been  a  series 
of  attacks  on  the  liberties  of  England  now  seemed  to 
die  a  martyr  in  the  cause  of  those  liberties.  No  dema- 
gogue ever  produced  such  an  impression  on  the  public 
mind  as  the  captive  King  who,  retaining  in  that  extrem- 
ity all  his  regal  dignity,  and  confronting  death  with 
dauntless  courage,  gave  utterance  to  the  feelings  of 
his  oppressed  people,  manfully  refused  to  plead  before 
a  court  unknown  to  the  law,  appealed  from  military 
violence  to  the  principles  of  the  constitution,  asked  by 
what  right  the  House  of  Commons  had  been  purged  of 
its  most  respectable  members  and  the  House  of  Lords 
deprived  of  its  legislative  functions,  and  told  his  weeping 
hearers  that  he  was  defending  not  only  his  own  cause, 
but  theirs.  His  long  misgovernment,  his  innumerable 
perfidies,  were  forgotten.  His  memory  AAas,  in  the 
minds  of  the  great  majority  of  his  subjects,  associated 
with  those  free  institutions  which  he  had,  during  many 
years,  laboured  to  destroy  :  for  those  free  institutions 
had  perished  with  him,  and,  amidst  the  mournful  silence 
of  a  community  kept  down  by  arms,  had  been  defended 
by  liis  voice  alone.  From  that  day  began  a  reaction  in 
favour  of  monarchy  and  of  the  exiled  house,  a  reaction 
which  never  ceased  till  the  throne  had  again  been  set 
up  in  all  its  old  dignity. 

At  first,  however,  the  slayers  of  the  King  seemed  to 
have  derived  new  energy  from  that  sacrament  of  blood 
bv  which  they  had  bound  themselves  closely  together, 
and  separated  tiiemselves  for  ever  from  the  great  body 
of  their  countrymen.    England  was  declai'ed  a  common- 


142  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

wealth.  The  House  of  Commons,  reduced  to  a  small 
number  of  members,  was  nominally  the  supremtj  power 
in  the  State.  In  fact,  the  army  and  its  great  chief 
governed  every  thing.  Oliver  had  made  his  choice. 
He  had  kept  the  hearts  of  his  soldiers,  and  had  broken 
with  almost  every  other  class  of  his  fellow-citizens.  Be- 
yond the  limits  of  his  camps  and  fortresses  he  could 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  a  party.  Those  elements  of 
force  which,  when  the  civil  war  broke  out,  had  appeared 
arrayed  against  each  other,  were  combined  against  him  ; 
all  the  Cavaliers,  the  great  majority  of  the  Roundheads, 
the  Anglican  Church,  the  Presbyterian  Church,  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  England,  Scotland,  Ireland. 
Yet  such  was  his  genius  and  resolution  that  he  was 
able  to  overpower  and  crush  everything  that  crossed 
his  path,  to  make  himself  more  absolute  master  of  his 
country  than  any  of  her  legitimate  Kings  had  been, 
and  to  make  his  country  more  dreaded  and  respected 
than  she  had  been  during  many  generations  under  the 
rule  of  her  legitimate  Kings. 

England  had  already  ceased  to  struggle.  But  the 
two  other  kingdoms  which  had  been  governed  by  the 
Stuarts  were  hostile  to  the  new  republic.  The  Inde- 
pendent party  was  equally  odious  to  the  Roman  Catho- 
lics of  Ireland,  and  to  the  Presbyterians  of  Scotland. 
Both  those  countries,  lately  in  rebellion  against  Charles 
the  First,  now  acknowledged  the  authority  of  Charles 
the  Second. 

But  everything  yielded  to  the  vigour  and  ability  of 
Subjuga-  Cromwell.  In  a  few  months  he  subjugated 
Ireland  and  Ii'claud,  as  Ireland  had  never  been  subjugated 
Scotland.  cluring  the  five  centuries  of  slaughter  which 
had  elapsed  since  the  landing  of  the  first  Norman  set- 
tlers.    He  resolved  to  put  an  end  to  that  conflict  of 


Ch.  l]  before  the  restoration.  1-1 8 

races  and  religions  which  had  so  lonr>;  distracted  the 
island,  by  making  the  English  and  Protestant  popnla- 
tion  decidedly  predominant.  For  this  end  he  gave  the 
rein  to  the  fierce  enthusiasm  of  his  followers,  waged 
war  resemblino;  that  which  Israel  Avao;ed  on  the  Ca- 
naanites,  smote  the  idolaters  with  the  edge  of  the 
sword,  so  that  great  cities  were  left  without  inhabi- 
tants, drove  many  thousands  to  the  Continent,  shipped 
off  many  tliousands  to  the  West  Indies,  and  supplied 
the  void  thus  made  by  pouring  in  numerous  colonists, 
of  Saxon  blood,  and  of  Calvinistic  faith.  Strange  to 
say,  under  that  iron  rule,  the  conquered  country  began 
to  wear  an  outward  face  of  prosperity.  Districts  which 
had  recently  been  as  wild  as  those  where  the  first  white 
settlers  of  Connecticut  were  contendinfj  with  the  red 
men  Avere  in  a  few  years  transformed  into  the  likeness 
of  Kent  and  Norfolk.  New  buildings,  roads,  and  })h\n- 
tations  were  everywhere  seen.  The  rent  of  estates 
rose  fast ;  and  soon  the  English  landowners  beoan  to 
complain  that  they  were  met  in  every  market  by  the 
products  of  Ireland,  and  to  clamour  for  protecting 
laws. 

From  Ireland  the  victorious  chief,  who  was  now  in 
name,  as  he  had  long  been  in  reality,  Lord  Gen(n-al  of 
the  armies  of  tlie  Commonwealth,  turned  to  Scotland. 
The  young  King  was  there.  He  had  consented  to 
profess  himself  a  Presbyterian,  and  to  subscribe  the 
Covenant ;  and,  in  return  for  these  concessions,  the 
austere  Puritans  who  bore  sway  at  Edinburgh  had 
permitted  liim  to  assume  the  crown,  and  to  hold,  under 
their  insj)ection  and  control,  a  solemn  and  melancholy 
court.  This  mock  loyalty  was  of  short  duration.  In 
two  great  battles  Cromwell  annihilated  the  militiiry 
force  of  Scotland.     Charles  fled  for  his  life,  and,  with 


144  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

extreme  difficulty,  escaped  the  fate  of  his  father.  The 
ancient  kino;dum  of  the  Stuarts  was  reduced,  for  the 
first  time,  to  profound  submission.  Of  that  indepen- 
dence, so  manfully  defended  against  the  mightiest  and 
ablest  of  the  Plantagenets,  no  vestige  Avas  left.  The 
English  Parliament  made  laws  for  Scotland.  English 
judges  held  assizes  in  Scotland.  Even  that  stubborn 
Church,  which  has  held  its  own  against  so  many  gov- 
ernments, scarce  dared  to  utter  an  audible  murmur. 

Thus  far  there  had  been  at  least  the  semblance  ol 
Expulsion  harmony  between  the  warriors  who  subju- 
Pariiamenf.  gated  Ireland  and  Scotland  and  the  poHti- 
cians  who  sate  at  Westminster :  but  the  alliance  which 
had  been  cemented  by  danger  was  dissolved  by  victory. 
The  Parliament  forgot  that  it  was  but  the  creature  of 
the  army.  The  army  was  less  disposed  than  ever  to 
submit  to  the  dictation  of  the  Parliament.  Indeed  the 
few  members  who  made  up  what  was  contemptuously 
called  the  Rump  of  the  House  of  Commons  had  no 
more  claim  than  the  military  chiefs  to  be  esteemed  the 
representatives  of  the  nation.  The  dispute  was  soon 
brought  to  a  decisive  issue.  Cromwell  filled  the  House 
with  armed  men.  The  Speaker  was  pulled  out  of  his 
chair,  the  mace  taken  from  the  table,  the  room  cleared, 
and  the  door  locked.  The  nation,  which  loved  neither 
of  the  contending  parties,  but  which  was  forced,  in  its 
own  despite,  to  respect  the  capacity  and  resolution  of 
the  General,  looked  on  with  patience,  if  not  with  com- 
j)lacency. 

King,  Lords,  and  Commons,  had  now  in  turn  been 
vanquished  and  destroyed  ;  and  Cromwell  seemed  to 
be  left  the  sole  heir  of  the  powers  of  all  three.  Yet 
were  certain  limitations  still  imposed  on  him  by  the 
very  army  to  which  he  owed  his  immense  authority. 


Cif.  I.J  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  145 

Tliat  singular  body  of  men  was,  for  tlie  most  part,  com- 
posed of  zealous  republicans.  In  the  act  of  enslaving 
their  country,  they  had  deceived  themselves  into  the 
belief  that  they  were  emancipating  her.  The  book 
which  they  most  venerated  furnished  them  with  a  pre- 
cedent which  was  frequently  in  their  mouths.  It  was 
true  that  the  ignorant  and  uno;rateful  nation  murmured 
against  its  deliverers.  Even  so  had  another  chosen  na- 
tion murmured  against  the  leader  who  brought  it,  by 
painful  and  dreary  paths,  from  the  house  of  bondage 
to  the  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey.  Yet  had 
that  leader  rescued  his  brethren  in  spite  of  themselves ; 
nor  had  he  shrunk  from  making  terrible  examples  of 
those  who  contemned  the  proffered  freedom,  and  pined 
for  the  fleshpots,  the  taskmasters,  and  the  idolatries  of 
Egypt.  The  object  of  the  warlike  saints  who  sui'- 
rounded  Cromwell  was  the  settlement  of  a  free  and 
pious  commonwealth.  For  that  end  they  were  ready 
to  employ,  without  scruple,  any  means,  however  vio- 
lent and  lawless.  It  was  not  impossible,  therefore,  to 
establish  by  their  aid  a  dictatorship  such  as  no  Kino- 
had  ever  exercised  :  but  it  was  probable  that  their  aid 
would  be  at  once  withdrawn  from  a  niler  who,  even 
under  strict  constitutional  restraints,  should  venture 
to  assume  the  regal  name  and  dignity. 

The  sentiments  of  Cromwell  wore  widely  different. 
He  was  not  what  he  had  been  ;  nor  would  it  be  just  to 
consider  the  change  whi(^h  his  views  had  undergone  as 
the  effect  merely  of  selfish  ambition.  When  he  came 
up  to  the  Long  Parliament,  he  brought  with  him  from 
his  rural  retreat  little  knowledge  of  books,  no  expe- 
rience of  gr(;at  affnirs,  and  a  temper  galled  by  the  long 
tyranny  of  the  government  and  of  the  hierarchy.  He 
had,  din-inn;   the    thii-teen   vears  Avhich  followed,  crone 

VOL.  I.  10 


146  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  L 

through  a  pohtical  education  of  no  common  kind.  He 
had  been  a  chief  actor  in  a  succession  of  revohitions. 
He  had  been  long  the  soul,  and  at  last  the  head,  of  a 
party.  He  had  commanded  armies,  won  battles,  nego- 
tiated treaties,  subdued,  pacified,  and  regulated  king- 
doms. It  would  have  been  strange  indeed  if  his  notions 
had  been  still  the  same  as  in  the  days  when  his  mind 
was  principally  occupied  by  his  fields  and  his  religion, 
and  when  the  greatest  events  which  diversified  the 
course  of  his  life  were  a  cattle  fair  or  a  prayer  meeting 
at  Huntino;don.  He  saw  that  some  schemes  of  inno- 
vation  for  which  he  had  once  been  zealous,  whether 
good  or  bad  in  themselves,  were  opposed  to  the  general 
feeling  of  the  country,  and  that,  if  he  persevered  in 
those  schemes,  he  had  nothing  before  him  but  constant 
troubles,  which  must  be  suppressed  by  the  constant  use 
of  the  sword.  He  therefore  wished  to  restore,  in  all 
essentials,  that  ancient  constitntion  which  the  majority 
of  the  people  had  always  loved,  and  for  which  they  now 
pined.  The  course  afterAvards  taken  by  Monk  was  not 
open  to  Cromwell.  The  memory  of  one  terrible  day 
separated  the  great  regicide  for  ever  from  the  House 
of  Stuart.  What  remained  was  that  he  should  mount 
the  ancient  English  throne,  and  reign  according  to  the 
ancient  English  polity.  If  he  could  effect  this,  he 
might  hope  that  the  Avounds  of  the  lacerated  State 
would  heal  fast.  Great  numbers  of  honest  and  quiet 
men  would  speedily  rally  round  him.  Those  Royalists 
whose  attachment  was  rather  to  institutions  than  to 
persons,  to  the  kingly  office  than  to  King  Charles  the 
First  or  King  Charles  the  Second,  would  soon  kiss  the 
hand  of  King  Ohver.  The  peers,  who  now  remained 
sullenly  at  their  country  houses,  and  refused  to  take 
any  part  in  public  affairs,  would,  when  summoned  to 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE  THE  RESTORATION.  147 

their  House  by  the  writ  of  a  King  in  possession,  gladly 
resume  their  ancient  functions.  Northumberland  and 
Bedford,  Manchester  and  Pembroke,  Avould  be  proud 
to  bear  the  crown  and  the  spurs,  the  sceptre  and  the 
globe  before  the  restorer  of  aristocracy.  A  sentiment 
of  loyalty  would  gradually  bind  the  people  to  the  new 
dynasty ;  and,  on  the  decease  of  the  founder  of  that 
dynasty,  the  royal  dignity  might  descend  with  general 
acquiescence  to  his  posterity. 

The  ablest  Royalists  were  of  opinion  that  tliese  views 
were  correct,  and  that,  if  Cromwell  had  been  permitted 
to  follow  his  own  judgment,  the  exiled  line  would  never 
have  been  restored.  But  his  plan  was  directly  opposed 
to  the  feelings  of  the  only  class  which  he  dared  not 
offend.  The  name  of  King  was  hateful  to  the  soldiers. 
Some  of  them  were  indeed  unwilling  to  see  the  admin- 
istration in  the  hands  of  any  single  person.  The  great 
majority,  however,  were  disposed  to  support  their  gen- 
eral, as  elective  first  magistrate  of  a  commonwealth, 
against  all  factions  which  might  resist  his  authority : 
but  they  would  not  consent  that  he  should  assume  the 
regal  title,  or  that  the  dignity,  which  was  the  just 
reward  of  his  pei'sonal  merit,  should  be  declared  hered- 
itary in  his  family.  All  that  was  left  to  him  was,  to 
give  to  the  new  republic  a  constitution  as  like  the  con- 
stitution of  the  old  monarchy  as  the  army  Avould  bear. 
That  his  elevation  to  power  might  not  seem  to  be  his 
own  mere  act,  he  convoked  a  council,  composed  partly 
of  persons  on  whose  support  he  could  depend,  and 
partly  of  persons  whose  o])positlon  he  might  safely 
defy.  This  assembly,  which  he  called  a  Parliament, 
and  which  the  populace  nicknamed,  from  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  membm-s,  Barebone's  Parliament, 
after  exposing  itself  during  a  short  time  to  the  public 


148  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  (Ch.  I. 

contempt,  surrendered  back  to  the  General  the  powers 
which  it  had  received  from  him,  and  left  him  at  liberty 
to  frame  a  plan  of  government. 

His  plan  bore,  from  the  first,  a  considerable  resem- 
The  Protec-  blancc  to  the  old  English  constitution  ;  but, 
o^iwer  crom-  i"  ^  f^w  jcars,  hc  thouglit  it  safe  to  proceed 
further,  and  to  restore  almost  every  part  of 
the  ancient  system  under  new  names  and  forms.  The 
title  of  King  was  not  revived ;  but  the  kingly  preroga- 
tives were  intrusted  to  a  Lord  High  Protector.  The 
sovereign  was  called  not  His  Majesty,  but  His  High- 
ness. He  was  not  crowned  and  anointed  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  but  was  solemnly  enthroned,  girt  with 
a  sword  of  state,  clad  in  a  robe  of  purple,  and  pre- 
sented with  a  rich  Bible,  in  Westminster  Hall.  His 
office  was  not  declared  hereditary :  but  he  was  per- 
mitted to  name  his  successor  ;  and  none  could  doubt 
that  he  would  name  his  son. 

A  House  of  Commons  was  a  necessary  part  of  the 
new  polity.  In  constituting  this  body,  the  Protector 
showed  a  wisdom  and  a  public  spirit  which  were  not 
duly  appreciated  by  his  contemporaries.  The  vices  of 
the  old  representative  system,  though  by  no  means  so 
serious  as  they  afterwards  became,  had  already  been 
remarked  by  farsighted  men.  Cromwell  reformed  that 
system  on  the  same  principles  on  which  Mr.  Pitt,  a 
hundred  and  thirty  years  later,  attempted  to  reform  it, 
and  on  which  it  was  at  length  I'eformed  in  our  own 
times.  Small  boroughs  were  disfranchised  even  more 
unsparingly  than  in  1832  ;  and  the  number  of  county 
members  was  greatly  increased.  Very  few  unrepre- 
sented towns  had  yet  grown  into  importance.  Of  those 
towns  the  most  considerable  were  Manchester,  Leeds, 
and  Halifax.     Representatives  were  given  to  all  three. 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE  RESTORATION.  149 

An  addition  Avas  made  to  the  number  of  the  members 
for  the  capital.  The  elective  franchise  was  placed  on 
such  a  footing  that  every  man  of  substance,  whether 
possessed  of  freehold  estates  in  laud  or  not,  had  a 
vote  for  the  county  in  which  he  resided.  A  few 
Scotchmen  and  a  few  of  the  English  colonists  settled 
in  Ireland,  were  summoned  to  the  assembly  which 
was  to  legislate,  at  Westminster,  for  every  part  of  the 
British  isles. 

To  create  a  House  of  Lords  was  a  less  easy  task. 
Democracy  does  not  require  the  support  of  prescrip- 
tion. Monarchy  has  often  stood  without  that  supjwrt. 
But  a  patrician  order  is  the  work  of  time.  Oliver 
found  already  existing  a  nobility,  opulent,  highly  con- 
sidered, and  as  popular  with  the  commonalty  as  any 
nobility  has  ever  been.  Had  he,  as  King  of  England, 
commanded  the  peers  to  meet  him  in  Parliament  ac- 
cording to  the  old  usage  of  the  realm,  many  of  them 
would  undoubtedly  have  obeyed  the  call.  This  he 
could  not  do  ;  and  it  was  to  no  purpose  that  he  offered 
to  the  chiefs  of  illustrious  families  seats  in  his  new 
senate.  They  conceived  that  they  could  not  accept  a 
nomination  to  an  uj)start  assembly  without  renouncing 
their  birthright  and  betraying  their  order.  The  Pro- 
tector was,  therefore,  under  the  necessity  of  filling  his 
Upper  House  with  new  men  who,  during  the  late  stir- 
ring times,  had  made  themselves  conspicuous.  This  was 
the  least  happy  of  his  contx'ivances,  and  displeased  all 
parties.  The  Levellers  were  angry  with  him  for  insti- 
tuting a  privileged  class.  The  multitude,  which  felt 
respect  and  fondness  for  the  great  historical  names  of 
the  land,  laughed  without  restraint  at  a  House  of  Lords, 
in  which  lucky  draymen  and  shoemakers  were  seated, 
to  which  few  of  the  old  nobles  Avere  invited,  and  from 


150 


HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 


which  almost  all  those  old  nobles  who  were  invited 
turned  disdainfully  away. 

How  Oliver's  Parliaments  were  constituted,  how- 
ever, was  practically  of  little  moment :  for  he  possessed 
the  means  of  conducting  the  administration  without 
their  support,  and  in  defiance  of  their  opposition.  His 
wish  seems  to  have  been  to  govern  constitutionally, 
and  to  substitute  the  empire  of  the  laws  for  that  of  the 
sword.  But  he  soon  found  that,  hated  as  he  was,  both 
by  Royalists  and  Presbyterians,  he  could  be  safe  only 
by  being  absolute.  The  first  House  of  Commons 
which  the  people  elected  by  his  command,  questioned 
his  authority,  and  was  dissolved  without  having  passed 
a  single  act.  His  second  House  of  Commons,  though 
it  recognised  him  as  Protector,  and  would  gladly  have 
made  him  King,  obstinatelv  refused  to  acknowledcre  his 
new  Lords.  He  had  no  course  left  but  to  dissolve  the 
Parliament.  "'  God,"  he  exclaimed,  at  parting,  "  be 
judge  between  you  and  me  !  " 

Yet  was  the  energy  of  the  Protector's  administra- 
tion in  nowise  relaxed  by  these  dissensions.  Those 
soldiers  who  would  not  suffer  him  to  assume  the  kingly 
title  stood  by  him  when  he  ventured  on  acts  of  power, 
as  high  as  any  English  King  has  ever  attempted.  The 
government,  therefore,  though  in  form  a  republic,  was 
in  truth  a  despotism,  moderated  only  by  the  wisdom, 
the  sobriety,  and  the  magnanimity  of  the  despot.  The 
country  was  divided  into  military  districts.  Those 
districts  were  placed  under  the  command  of  Major 
Generals.  Every  insurrectionary  movement  was 
promptly  put  down  and  punished.  The  fear  inspired 
by  the  power  of  the  sword  in  so  strong,  steady,  and 
expert  a  hand,  quelled  the  spirit  both  of  Cavaliers  and 
Levellers.     The  loyal  gentry  declared  that  they  were 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  151 

Btill  as  ready  as  ever  to  risk  their  lives  for  the  old  gov- 
ernment and  the  old  dynasty,  if  there  were  the  slight- 
est hope  of  success  :  but  to  rush  at  the  head  of  their 
servino-  men  and  tenants  on  the  i)ikes  of  brigades  vie- 
torious  in  a  hundred  battles  and  sieges,  would  be  a 
fi-antic  waste  of  innocent  and  honourable  blood.  Both 
Royalists  and  Republicans,  having  no  hope  in  open 
resistance,  began  to  revolve  dark  schemes  of  assassina- 
tion :  but  the  Protector's  intelligence  was  good:  his 
vioilance  was  unremitting ;  and,  whenever  he  moved 
beyond  the  walls  of  his  palace,  the  drawn  swords  and 
cuirasses  of  his  trusty  bodyguards  encompassed  him 
thick  on  every  side. 

Had   he    been    a    cruel,    licentious,    and    rapacious 
prince,   the  nation  might   have   found  courage  in  de- 
spair, and  might  have  made  a  convulsive  effort  to  free 
itself  from  military  dominaticm.      liut  the  grievances 
which   the   country  suffered,  though   such   as   excited 
serious  discontent,  were   by  no   means  such   as   imi)el 
great  masses  of  men  to  stake  their  lives,  their  fortunes, 
and  the  welfare  of  their  families  against  fearful  odds. 
The  taxation,  though  heavier  than  it  had  been  under 
the   Stuarts,  was  not  heavy  when  com|)ared  with  that 
of  the   neio-hboiu-inn;  states  and  with  the  resources  of 
England.     Property  w^as  secure.     Even  the  Cavalier, 
who  refrained  I'rom  giving  disturbance  to  the  new  set- 
tlement, enjoyed  in  ])eace  whatever  the  civil  troubles 
had  left   him.     The   laws  were  violated  only  in  cases 
where  the  safety  of  the  Protector's  person  and  govern- 
ment was  concerned.       Justice  was  administered  be- 
tween man  and  man  with  an  exactness  and  purity  not. 
before   known.      Under  no  English  government,  smce 
the  Reformation,  had  there  been  so  little  religious  j)er- 
secution.     The  unfortunate  Roman  Catholics,  indeed, 


152  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

were  lielJ  to  be  scarcely  within  the  pale  of  Christian 
charity.  But  the  clergy  of  the  fallen  Anglican  Church 
wei-e  suffered  to  celebrate  their  worship  on  condition 
that  they  would  abstain  from  preaching  about  politics. 
Even  the  Jews,  whose  public  worship  had,  ever  since 
the  thirteenth  century,  been  interdicted,  were,  in  spite 
of  the  strong  opposition  of  jealous  traders  and  fanatical 
theologians,  permitted  to  build  a  synagogue  in  London. 
The  Protector's  foreign  policy  at  the  same  time  ex- 
torted the  ungracious  approbation  of  those  who  most 
detested  him.  The  Cavaliers  could  scarcely  refrain 
from  wishing  that  one  who  had  done  so  much  to  raise 
the  fame  of  the  nation  had  been  a  leo-itimate  Kino; : 
and  the  Republicans  were  forced  to  own  that  the  t}''- 
rant  suffered  none  but  himself  to  wrong  his  country, 
and  that,  if  he  had  robbed  her  of  libertv,  he  had  at 
least  given  her  glory  in  exchange.  After  half  a  cen- 
tury during  which  England  had  been  of  scai'cely  more 
weight  in  European  politics  than  Venice  or  Saxony, 
she  at  once  became  the  most  formidable  power  in  the 
world,  dictated  terms  of  peace  to  the  United  Provinces, 
avenged  the  common  injuries  of  Christendom  on  the 
pirates  of  Barbaiy,  vanquished  the  Sj)aniards  by  land 
and  sea,  seized  one  of  the  finest  West  Indian  islands, 
and  acquired  on  the  Flemish  coast  a  fortress  which 
consoled  the  national  pride  for  the  loss  of  Calais.  She 
was  supreme  on  the  ocean.  She  was  the  head  of  the 
Protestant  interest.  All  the  reformed  Churches  scat- 
tered over  Roman  Catholic  king-doms  acknowledo-ed 
Cromwell  as  their  miardian.  The  Husnenots  of  Lan- 
guedoc,  the  shepherds  who,  in  the  hamlets  of  the  Alps, 
professed  a  Protestantism  older  than  that  of  Augsburg, 
were  secured  from  oppression  by  the  mere  terror  of 
his   great   name.      The   Pope   himself  was  forced  to 


Ch.  I.]  before;  the  restoration.  153 

preach  humanity  and  moderation  to  Popish  pnnces. 
For  a  voice  which  seldom  threatened  in  vain  had  de- 
clared that,  unless  favour  were  shown  to  the  people 
of  God,  the  English  guns  should  be  heard  in  the 
Castle  of  Saint  Angelo.  In  truth,  there  was  nothino- 
which  Cromwell  had,  for  his  own  sake  and  that  of  his 
family,  so  much  reason  to  desire  as  a  o-eneral  relioious 
war  in  Europe.  In  such  a  war  he  must  have  been  the 
captain  of  the  Protestant  armies.  The  heart  of  Eng- 
land would  have  been  with  him.  His  victories  would 
have  been  hailed  with  an  unanimous  enthusiasm  un- 
known in  the  country  since  the  rout  of  the  Armada, 
and  would  have  effaced  the  stain  which  one  act,  con- 
demned by  the  general  voice  of  the  nation,  has  left  on 
his  splendid  fame.  Uidiappily  for  hlin  lie  had  no  op- 
portunity of  disjilaying  his  admirable  military  talents, 
except  against  the  inhabitants  of  the  British  i^les. 

While  he  lived  his  power  stood  firm,  an  object  of 
mingled  aversion,  admiration,  and  dread  to  his  sub- 
jects. Few  indeed  loved  his  government ;  but  those 
who  hated  it  most  hated  it  less  than  they  feared  it. 
Had  it  been  a  worse  government,  it  might  perha])s 
have  been  overthrown  in  spite  of  all  its  strength. 
Had  it  been  a  weaker  government,  it  would  certainly 
have  been  overthrown  in  spite  of  all  its  merits.  But 
it  had  moderation  enough  to  abstain  from  those  op- 
pressions wliich  drive  men  mad;  and  it  had  a  force  and 
energy  which  none  but  men  driven  mad  by  oppressicm 
would  venture  to  encounter. 

It  has  often  been  affirmed,  but  ap))arently  with  little 
reason,  that  Oliver  died  at  a  time  fortunate   Oliver  suc- 
for  his  renown,  and  tliat,  if  his  life  had  been   Ri'diani."^ 
prolonged,  it  would  probably  have  closed  amidst  dis* 
graces  and  disasters.     It  is  certain   that  he  was,  to  the 


154  HISTOEY   OP   ENGLAND,  fCn.  L 

last,  honoured  by  his  soldiers,  obeyed  by  the  whole 
population  of  the  British  islands,  and  dreaded  by  all 
foreign  powers,  that  he  was  laid  among  the  ancient  sov 
ereigns  of  England  with  funeral  pomp  such  as  London 
had  never  before  seen,  and  that  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  son  Richard  as  quietly  as  any  King  had  ever  been 
succeeded  by  any  Prince  of  Wales. 

Durino;  five  months,  the  administration  of  Richard 
Cromwell  went  on  so  trancjuilly  and  regularly  that  all 
Europe  believed  him  to  be  firmly  established  on  the 
chair  of  state.  In  truth  his  situation  was  in  some  re- 
spects much  more  advantageous  than  that  of  his  father. 
The  young  man  had  made  no  enemy.  His  hands  Avere 
unstained  by  civil  blood.  The  Cavaliers  themselves 
allowed  him  to  be  an  honest,  goodnatured  gentleman. 
The  Presbyterian  party,  powerful  both  in  numbers  and 
in  wealth',  had  been  at  deadly  feud  with  the  late  Pro- 
tector,  but  was  disposed  to  regard  the  present  Protector 
with  favour.  That  party  had  always  been  desirous  to 
see  the  old  civil  polity  of  the  realm  restored  with  some 
clearer  definitions  and  some  stronger  safeguards  for 
public  liberty,  but  had  many  reasons  for  dreading  the 
restoration  of  the  old  family.  Richard  was  the  very 
man  for  politicians  of  this  description.  His  humanity, 
ingenuousness,  and  modesty,  the  mediocrity  of  his  abil- 
ities, and  the  docility  with  which  he  submitted  to  the 
guidance  of  persons  wiser  than  himself,  admirably  qual- 
ified him  to  be  the  head  of  a  limited  monarchy. 

For  a  time  it  seemed  highly  probable  that  he  would, 
under  the  direction  of  able  advisers,  eifect  what  his 
father  had  attempted  in  vain.  A  Parliament  was  called, 
and  the  writs  were  directed  after  the  old  fashion.  The 
small  boroughs  which  had  recently  been  disfranchised 
regained  their  lost  privilege :  INIanchester,  Leeds,  and 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE    RESTORATION.  165 

Halifax  ceased  to  return  members  ;  and  the  coimty  of 
York  was  again  limited  to  two  knights.  It  may  seem 
strancre  to  a  generation  which  has  been  excited  almost 
to  madness  by  the  question  of  parliamentary  reform  that 
great  shires  and  towns  should  have  submitted  with  j)a- 
tience,  and  even  with  complacency,  to  this  change  :  but 
though  speculative  men  might,  even  in  that  age,  discern 
the  vices  of  the  old  representative  system,  and  pre- 
dict that  those  vices  would,  sooner  or  later,  produce  se- 
rious practical  evil,  the  practical  evil  had  not  yet  been 
felt.  Oliver's  representative  system,  on  the  other  hand, 
though  constructed  on  the  soundest  principles,  was  not 
popular.  Both  the  events  in  which  it  originated,  anil 
the  effects  which  it  had  produced,  prejudiced  men 
against  it.  It  had  sprung  from  military  violence.  It 
had  been  fruitful  of  nothing  but  dls[)utes.  The  whole 
nation  was  sick  of  government  by  the  sword,  and  pined 
for  government  by  the  law.  The  restoration,  therefore, 
even  of  anomalies  and  abuses,  Avhich  were  in  strict  con- 
formity with  the  law,  and  which  had  been  destroyed  by 
the  sword,  gave  general  satisfaction. 

Among  the  Commons  there  was  a  strong  opposition, 
consisting  partly  of  avowed  Republicans,  and  partly  of 
concealed  Royalists  :  but  a  large  and  steady  majority 
appeared  to  be  favourable  to  the  plan  of  reviving  the 
old  civil  constitution  under  a  new  dynasty.  Richard 
was  solemnly  recognised  as  first  magistrate.  The  Com- 
mons not  only  consented  to  transact  business  with  Oli- 
ver's Lords,  but  passed  a  vote  acknowledging  the  right 
of  those  nobles  who  had  in  the  late  troubles  taken  the 
side  of  public  lilicrty,  to  sit  in  the  Upper  House  of  Par- 
liament without  any  new  creation. 

Thus  far  the  statesmen  by  whose  advice  Richard 
acted  had  been  successful.     Almost  all  the  parts  of  thfl 


156  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

government  were  now  constituted  as  they  had  been 
constituted  at  the  commencement  of  the  civil  war. 
Had  the  Protector  and  the  Parliament  been  suffered 
to  proceed  undisturbed,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
an  order  of  thinjis  similar  to  that  which  was  afterwards 
established  under  the  House  of  Hanover  Avould  have 
been  established  under  the  House  of  Cromwell.  But 
there  was  in  the  State  a  power  more  than  sufficient  to 
deal  with  Protector  and  Parliament  together.  Over 
tlie  soldiers  Richard  had  no  authority  except  that  which 
he  derived  from  the  great  name  which  he  had  inherited. 
He  had  never  led  them  to  victory.  He  had  never  even 
borne  arms.  All  his  tastes  and  habits  were  pacific. 
Nor  were  his  opinions  and  feelings  on  religious  subjects 
approved  by  the  military  saints.  That  he  was  a  good 
man  he  evinced  by  proofs  more  satisfactory  than  deep 
groans  or  long  sermons,  by  humility  and  suavity  wlien 
he  Avas  at  the  height  of  human  greatness,  and  by  cheer- 
ful resio-nation  under  cruel  wrongs  and  misfortunes  :  but 
the  cant  then  common  in  every  guardroom  gave  him  a 
disgust  which  he  had  not  always  the  prudence  to  con- 
ceal. The  officers  who  had  the  principal  influence 
among  the  troops  stationed  near  London  were  not  his 
friends.  They  were  men  distinguished  by  valoiir  and 
conduct  in  the  field,  but  destitute  of  the  wisdom  and 
i'lvW  courage  which  had  been  conspicuous  in  their  de- 
ceased leader.  Some  of  them  were  honest,  but  fanati- 
cal. Independents  and  Republicans.  Of  this  class  Fleet- 
wood was  the  representative.  Others  were  impatient 
to  be  what  Oliver  had  been.  His  rapid  elevation,  his 
prosperity  and  glory,  his  inauguration  in  the  Hall,  and 
his  gorgeous  obsequies  in  the  Abbey,  had  inflamed  their 
imagination.  They  were  as  well  born  as  he,  and  as 
well   educated  :  they  could  not  understand  why  tliey 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  157 

were  not  as  worthy  to  wear  the  purple  robe,  and  to 
wield  the  sword  of  state  ;  and  they  pursued  the  objects 
of  their  wild  ambition,  not,  like  him,  with  patience, 
vigilance,  saeacitv,  and  determination,  but  with  the 
restlessness  and  irresolution  characteristic  of  aspiring 
mediocrity.  Among  these  feeble  copies  of  a  great  orig- 
inal the  most  conspicuous  was  Lambert. 

On  the  very  day  of  Richard's  accession  the  officers 
beixan  to  conspire  axrainst  their  new  master.   FaiiofKuh- 

~  I  ^    ^  ^  ^  ard,  and  re- 

The   ffood   understandino;  which  existed   be-  ^'vai  of  tiie 

O  r^  Long  I'arlia- 

tween  him  and  his  Parliament  hastened  the  ment. 
crisis.  Alarm  and  resentment  spread  through  the 
camp.  Both  the  religious  and  the  professional  feelings 
of  the  army  were  deeply  wounded.  It  seemed  that  the 
Independents  were  to  be  subjected  to  the  Presbyterians, 
and  that  the  men  of  the  sword  were  to  be  subjected  to 
the  men  of  the  gown.  A  coalition  was  formed  betAveen 
the  military  malecontents  and  the  republican  minority 
of  the  House  of  Connnons.  It  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  Richard  could  have  triumphed  over  that  coa- 
lition, even  if  he  had  inherited  his  father's  clear  judg- 
ment and  iron  courage.  It  is  cei'tain  that  simplicity 
and  meekness  like  his  were  not  the  qualities  which  the 
conjuncture  required.  He  fell  ingloriously,  and  with- 
out a  struggle.  He  was  used  by  the  army  as  an  in- 
strument for  the  purpose  of  dissolving  the  Parliament, 
and  was  then  contemptuously  thrown  aside.  Tiie  offi- 
cers gratified  their  republican  allies  by  declaring  that 
the  expulsion  of  the  JIuinp  had  been  illegal,  and  hv  in- 
viting that  assembly  to  I'csume  its  functions.  The  old 
Speaker  and  a  ipiorum  of  the  old  members  came  to- 
gether and  were  prociainied,  amidst  the  scarcely  stifii'd 
derision  and  execration  of  the  whole  nation,  the  supreme 
power  in  the  Conunonwealth.     It  was  at  the  same  time 


158  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  |Ci.    } 

expressly  declared  that  there  should  be  no  first  magis- 
trate, and  no  House  of  Lords. 

But  this  state  of  tilings  could  not  last.  On  the  day 
on  which  the  Long  Parliament  revived,  revived  also  its 
old  quarrel  vv^ith  the  army.  Again  the  Rump  forgot 
that  it  owed  its  existence  to  the  pleasui'e  of  the  soldiers, 
Second  expui-  ^^^*-^  bcgaii  to  treat  them  as  subjects.  Again 
Lon<'°Pariia-  ^^^^  doors  of  the  House  of  Commons  were 
went.  closed  by  military  violence  ;  and  a  provisional 

government,  named  by  the  officers,  assumed  the  direc- 
tion of  affairs. 

Meanwhile  the  sense  of  great  evils,  and  the  strong 
apprehension  of  still  greater  evils  close  at  hand,  had  at 
length  produced  an  alliance  between  the  Cavaliers  and 
the  Presbyterians.  Some  Pi'esbyterians  had,  indeed, 
been  disposed  to  such  an  alliance  even  before  the  death 
of  Charles  the  First :  but  it  was  not  till  after  the  fall 
of  Richard  Cromwell  that  the  whole  party  became  eager 
for  the  restoration  of  the  royal  house.  There  was  no 
longer  any  reasonable  hope  that  the  old  constitution 
could  be  reestablished  under  a  new  dynasty.  One 
choice  only  was  left,  the  Stuarts  or  the  army.  The 
banished  family  had  committed  great  faults  ;  but  it  had 
dearly  expiated  those  faults,  and  had  undergone  a  long, 
and,  it  might  be  hoped,  a  salutary  training  in  the  school 
of  adversity.  It  was  probable  that  Charles  the  Second 
would  take  warning  by  the  fate  of  Charles  the  First. 
But,  be  this  as  it  might,  the  dangers  which  threatened 
the  country  were  such  that,  in  order  to  avert  them, 
some  opinions  might  well  be  compromised,  and  some 
risks  might  well  be  incurred.  It  seemed  but  too  likely 
that  England  would  fall  under  the  most  odious  and  de- 
grading of  all  kinds  of  government,  under  a  govern- 
ment uniting  all  the  evils  of  despotism  to  all  the  evils 


I 


Ch.  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  159 

of  anarchy.  Anything  was  preferable  to  the  yoke  of  a 
succession  of  incaj^able  and  inglorious  tyrants,  raised  to 
power,  like  the  Deys  of  Barbary,  by  military  revolu- 
tions recurring  at  short  intervals.  Lambert  seemed 
likely  to  be  the  first  of  these  rulers  :  but  within  a  year 
Lambert  might  give  place  to  Desborough,  and  Des- 
borough  to  Harrison.  As  often  as  the  truncheon  was 
transferred  from  one  feeble  hand  to  another,  the  nation 
would  be  pillaged  for  the  purpose  of  bestowing  a  fresh 
donative  on  the  troops.  If  the  Presbyterians  obsti- 
nately stood  aloof  from  the  Royalists,  the  State  was  lost ; 
and  men  might  well  doubt  whether,  by  the  combined 
exertions  of  Presbyterians  and  Royalists,  it  could  be 
saved.  For  the  dread  of  that  invincible  army  was  on  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  island  ;  and  the  Cavaliers,  taught 
by  a  hundred  disastrous  fields  how  little  numbers  can 
effect  against  discij)line,  were  even  more  completely 
cowed  than  the  Roundheads. 

While  the  soldiers  ivmained  united,  all  the  j)lots  and 
risings  of  the  malecontents  were  ineffectual.   T^,g  .^.^^ . 
But  a  few  days  after  the  second  expulsion  of   of  •■^'•""">;'i 

.'  I  niarclu-s  in- 

the  Rump,  came  tidings  which  gladdened  the  *°  Kngiaua 
hearts  of  all  who  were  attached  either  to  monarchy  oi" 
to  liberty.  That  mighty  force  which  had,  during  many 
years,  acted  as  one  man,  and  which,  while  so  acting, 
had  been  found  irresistible,  was  at  lenolh  divided 
ao-.ainst  itself  The  army  of  Scotland  had  done  eood 
service  to  the  Connnonwealth,  and  was  in  the  hi<rhest 
state  of  efficiency.  It  had  borne  no  part  in  the  late 
revolutions,  and  had  seen  them  with  indignation  re- 
scmblinjT  the  indiirnation  which  the  Roman  lemons 
posted  on  the  Danube  and  tht'  Eui)lirates  felt,  when 
they  learned  that  the  empire  had  been  ])ut  up  to  sale 
by  the  Praetorian  Guards.     It  was  intolerable  that  cer- 


160  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  fCn.  I. 

tain  regiments  should,  merely  because  they  happened 
to  be  quartered  near  Westminster,  take  on  themselves 
to  make  and  unmake  several  governments  in  the  course 
of  half  a  year.  If  it  were  fit  that  the  state  should  be 
regulated  by  the  soldiers,  those  soldiers  who  upheld  the 
English  ascendency  on  the  north  of  the  Tweed  were  as 
well  entitled  to  a  voice  as  those  who  garrisoned  the 
Tower  of  London.  There  appears  to  have  been  less 
fanaticism  among  the  troops  stationed  in  Scotland 
than  in  any  other  part  of  the  army  ;  and  their  general, 
George  Monk,  was  himself  the  very  opposite  of  a 
zealot.  He  had,  at  the  commencement  of  the  civil 
war,  borne  arms  for  the  King,  had  been  made  prisoner 
by  the  Roundheads,  had  then  accepted  a  commission 
fi'om  the  Parliament,  and,  with  very  slender  pretensions 
to  saintship,  had  raised  himself  to  high  commands  by 
his  courage  and  professional  skill.  He  had  been  an 
useful  servant  to  both  the  Protectors,  had  quietly  acqui- 
esced when  the  officers  at  Westminster  pulled  down 
Richard  and  restored  the  Long  Parliament,  and  would 
perhaps  have  acquiesced  as  quietly  in  the  second  expul- 
sion of  the  Long  Parliament,  if  the  provisional  govern- 
ment had  abstained  from  giving  him  cause  of  offence 
and  apprehension.  For  his  nature  was  cautious  and 
somewhat  sluggish  ;  nor  was  he  at  all  disposed  to  haz- 
ard sure  and  moderate  advantages  for  the  chance  of  ob- 
taining  even  the  most  splendid  success.  He  seems  to 
have  been  impelled  to  attack  the  new  rulers  of  the 
commonwealth  less  by  the  hope  that,  if  he  overthrew 
them,  he  should  become  great,  than  by  the  fear  that, 
if  he  submitted  to  them,  he  should  not  even  be  secure. 
Whatever  were  his  motives,  he  declared  himself  the 
champion  of  the  oppressed  civil  power,  refused  to  ac- 
knowledge the    usurped    authority   of  the  provisional 


Ch-  I.]  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  161 

government,  and,  at  the  head  of  seven  thousand  veter- 
ans, marched  into  England. 

This  step  was  the  signal  for  a  general  explosion. 
The  people  everywhere  refused  to  pay  taxes.  The 
apprentices  of  the  City  assembled  by  thousands  and 
clamoured  for  a  free  Parliament.  The  fleet  sailed  up 
the  Thames,  and  declared  against  the  tyranny  of  the 
soldiers.  The  soldiers,  no  longer  under  the  control  of 
one  commanding  mind,  separated  into  factions.  Every 
regiment,  afraid  lest  it  should  be  left  alone  a  mai'k  for 
the  vengeance  of  the  oppressed  nation,  hastened  to 
make  a  separate  })eace.  Lambert,  who  had  hastened 
northward  to  encounter  the  army  of  Scotland,  was 
abandoned  by  his  troops,  and  became  a  prisoner.  Dui'- 
ing  thirteen  years  the  civil  power  had,  in  every  conflict, 
been  compelled  to  yield  to  the  military  power.  The 
military  power  now  humbled  itself  before  the  civil 
power.  The  Rmnp,  generally  hated  and  despised,  but 
still  the  only  body  in  the  country  which  had  any  show 
of  legal  authority,  returned  again  to  the  house  from 
which  it  had  been  twice  ignominiously  expelled. 

In  the  mean  time  Monk  was  advancinji  towards 
London.  Wherever  he  came,  the  gentry  flocked  round 
him,  imploring  him  to  use  his  power  for  the  ])iu-pose  of 
restoring  peace  and  lilierty  to  the  distracted  nation. 
The  General,  coldblooded,  taciturn,  zealous  for  no 
polity  and  for  no  religi(m,  maintained  an  impenetra- 
ble reserve.  What  were  at  this  time  his  plans,  and 
whether  he  had  any  plan,  may  well  be  doubted.  His 
great  object,  apparently,  was  to  keep  himself,  as  long 
as  possible,  free  to  choose  between  several  lines  of 
action.  Such,  indeed,  is  commonly  the  policy  of  men 
who  are,  like  him,  distinguished  rather  by  wariness 
than  by  farsightedness.     It  was  probably  not  till  he  liad 

VOL.  I.  11 


162  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

been  some  days  in  the  capital  that  he  made  up  his 
mind.  The  cry  of  the  whole  people  was  for  a  free 
Parliament ;  and  thei*e  could  be  no  doubt  that  a  Par- 
liament really  free  would  instantly  restore  the  exiled 
family.  The  Rump  and  the  soldiers  were  still  hostile 
to  the  House  of  Stuart.  But  the  Rump  was  univer- 
sally detested  and  despised.  The  power  of  the  soldiers 
was  indeed  still  formidable,  but  had  been  greatly  dr- 
minished  by  discord.  They  had  no  head.  They  hau 
recently  been,  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  arrayed 
against  each  other.  On  the  very  day  before  Monk 
reached  London,  there  was  a  fight  in  the  Strand  be- 
tween the  cavalry  and  the  infantry.  An  united  army 
had  long  kept  down  a  divided  nation :  but  the  nation 
was  now  united,  and  the  army  was  divided. 

During  a  short  time,  the  dissimulation  or  irresolu- 
Monk  de-  tion  of  Mouk  kept  all  parties  in  a  state  of 
frerparui  paluful  suspcusc.  At  length  he  broke  si- 
ment.  lence,  and  declared  for  a  free  Parliament. 

As  soon  as  his  declaration  was  known,  the  whole  na- 
tion was  wild  with  delight.  Wherever  he  appeared 
thousands  thronged  round  him,  shouting  and  blessing 
his  name.  The  bells  of  all  England  rang  joyously  :  the 
gutters  ran  with  ale  :  and,  night  after  night,  the  sky 
five  miles  round  London  was  reddened  by  innumer- 
able bonfires.  Those  Presbyterian  members  of  the 
House  of  Commons  who  had  many  years  before  been 
expelled  by  the  army,  returned  to  their  seats,  and  were 
hailed  with  acclamations  by  great  multitudes,  which 
filled  Westminster  Hall  and  Palace  Yard.  The  Inde- 
pendent leaders  no  longer  dared  to  show  their  faces  in 
the  streets,  and  were  scarcely  safe  within  their  own 
dwellings.  Temporary  provision  was  made  for  the 
government :  writs  were  issued  for  a  general  election , 


Ch.  I.J  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  1G3 

and  then  that  memorable  ParHament,  which  liad,  dur- 
ing twenty  eventful  years,  experienced  every  variety 
of  fortune,  which  had  triumphed  over  its  sovereign, 
which  liad  been  enslaved  and  degraded  by  its  servants, 
which  had  been  twnce  ejected  and  twice  restored,  sol- 
emnly decreed  its  own  dissolution. 

The  result  of  the  elections  was  such  as  might  have 
been  expected  from  the  temper  of  the  nation.  General  c-iec 
The  new  House  of  Commons  consisted,  with  *'f"»  of  i^-'^o. 
few  exceptions,  of  persons  friendly  to  the  royal  family. 
The  Presbyterians  formed  the  majority. 

That  there  would  be  a  restoration  now  seemed  al- 
most certain  ;  but  whether  there  would  be  a  peaceable 
restoration  was  matter  of  painful  doubt.  The  soldiers 
were  in  a  gloomy  and  savage  mood.  They  hated  the 
title  of  King.  They  hated  the  name  of  Stuart.  They 
hated  Presbytcrianism  much,  and  Prelacy  more.  They 
saw  with  bitter  indignation  that  the  close  of  their  loner 
domination  was  approaching,  and  that  a  life  of  inglo- 
rious toil  and  penury  was  before  them.  They  attrib- 
uted their  ill  fortune  to  the  weakness  of  some  generals, 
and  to  the  treason  of  others.  One  hour  of  their  be- 
loved Oliver  might  even  now  restore  the  glory  which 
had  departed.  Betrayed,  disunited,  and  left  without 
any  chief  in  whom  they  could  confide,  they  were  yet 
to  be  dreaded.  It  was  no  liiilit  thinn-  to  encounter  the 
rage  and  despair  of  fifty  thousand  fighting  men,  whose 
backs  no  enemy  had  ever  seen.  Monk,  and  those  with 
whom  he  acted,  were  well  aware  that  the  crisis  Avas 
most  perilous.  They  employed  every  art  to  sooth  and 
to  divide  the  discontented  warriors.  At  the  same  time 
vigorous  pre})nration  was  made  for  a  conflict.  The 
army  of  Scotland,  now  quartered  in  London,  was  kept 
in  good  humour  by  bribes,  praises,  and  promises.     The 


164  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  I. 

wealthy  citizens  grudged  nothing  to  a  red  coat,  and 
were  indeed  so  liberal  of  their  best  wine',  that  warlike 
saints  were  sometimes  seen  in  a  conditi<:)n  not  very 
honourable  either  to  their  religious  or  to  their  military 
character.  Some  refractory  regiments  Monk  ventured 
to  disband.  In  the  meantime  the  greatest  exertions 
were  made  by  the  provisional  goA^ernment,  with  the 
strenuous  aid  of  the  whole  body  of  the  gentry  and 
magistracy,  to  organize  the  militia.  In  every  county 
the  trainbands  were  held  ready  to  march  ;  and  this 
force  cannot  be  estimated  at  less  than  a  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  men.  In  Hyde  Park  twenty  thousand 
citizens,  well  armed  and  accoutred,  passed  in  review, 
and  showed  a  spirit  which  justified  the  hope  that,  in 
case  of  need,  they  would  fight  manfully  for  their  shops 
and  firesides.  The  fleet  was  heartily  with  the  nation. 
It  was  a  stirring  time,  a  time  of  anxiety,  yet  of  hope. 
The  prevailing  opinion  was  that  England  would  be  de- 
livered, but  not  without  a  desperate  and  bloody  strug- 
gle, and  that  the  class  which  had  so  long  ruled  by  the 
sword  would  perish  by  the  sword. 

Happily  the  dangers  of  a  conflict  were  averted. 
There  was  indeed  one  moment  of  extreme  peril.  Lam- 
bert escaped  from  his  confinement,  and  called  his  com- 
rades to  arms.  The  flame  of  civil  war  was  actually 
rekindled  ;  but  by  prompt  and  vigorous  exertion  it  was 
trodden  out  before  it  had  time  to  spread.  The  luckless 
imitator  of  Cromwell  was  again  a  prisoner.  The  fail- 
ure of  his  enterprise  damped  the  spirit  of  the  soldiers; 
and  they  sullenly  resigned  themselves  to  their  fate. 

The  new  Parliament,  which,  having  been  called 
TheRestora,  without  the  royal  writ,  is  more  accurately 
*'°°*  described  as  a  Convention,  met  at  Westmin- 

ster.   The  Lords  repaired  to  the  hall,  from  which  they 


Cn.  1. 1  BEFORE   THE   RESTORATION.  166 

had,  during  more  than  eleven  years,  been  excluded  by 
force.  Botli  Houses  instantly  invited  the  King  to  re- 
turn to  his  country.  He  was  proclaimed  with  pomp 
never  before  known.  A  gallant  fleet  convoyed  him 
from  Holland  to  the  coast  of  Kent.  When  he  landed, 
the  cliffs  of  Dover  were  covered  by  thousands  of  gazers, 
among  whom  scarcely  one  could  be  found  who  was  not 
weeping  with  delight.  The  journey  to  London  was  a 
continued  tiuumph.  The  whole  road  from  Rochester 
was  bordered  by  booths  and  tents,  and  looked  like  an 
interminable  fair.  Everywhere  flags  were  flying,  bells 
and  music  sounding,  wine  and  ale  flowing  in  rivers  to 
the  health  of  him  whose  return  was  the  return  of  peace, 
of  law,  and  of  freedom.  But  in  the  midst  of  the  gen- 
eral joy,  one  sj)ot  })resented  a  dark  and  threatening 
aspect.  On  Blackheath  tlie  army  was  drawn  up  to 
welcome  the  sovereign.  He  smiled,  bowed,  and  ex- 
tended his  hand  graciously  to  the  lips  of  the  colonels 
and  majors.  Bift  all  his  courtesy  was  vain.  The  coun- 
tenances of  the  soldiers  wex'e  sad  and  lowering ;  and, 
had  they  given  way  to  their  feelings,  the  festive  pag- 
eant of  which  they  reluctantly  made  a  part  would  have 
had  a  mournful  and  bloodv  end.  But  there  was  no 
concert  among;  them.  Discord  and  defection  had  left 
them  no  confldence  in  their  chiefs  or  in  each  other. 
The  whole  array  of  the  City  of  London  was  inider 
aiTns.  Numerous  companies  of  militia  had  assembled 
from  various  parts  of  the  realm,  under  the  command  of 
loyal  noblemen  and  gentlemen,  to  welcome  the  King. 
That  great  day  closed  in  peace  ;  and  the  restoi'ed  wan- 
derer reposed  safe  in  the  palace  of  his  ancestors. 


166  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  fCn.  H 


CHAPTER   II. 

The  history   of  England,  during   the   seventeenth 
Conductor     century,  is  the  history  of  the  transformation 
restored  the    of  a  hmitcd  monarchy,  constiruted  after  the 
Stuart  un-     fashiou   of  the    middle    ages,    into  a   limited 
gurcd."''^      monarchy  suited  to  that  more  advanced  state 
of  society  in  which  the  public  charges  can  no  longer 
be  borne  by  the  estates  of  the  crown,  and  in  which  the 
public  defence  can  no  longer  be  entrusted  to  a  feudal 
militia.     We  have  seen  that  the  politicians  who  were 
at  the  head  of  the  Long  Parliament  made,  in  1642, 
a  great  effort  to  accomplish  this  change  by  transferring, 
directly  and  formally,  to  the  Estates  of  the  realm  the 
choice  of  ministers,  the  command  of  the  army,  and  the 
superintendence    of  the    whole    execvitive  administra- 
tion.    This  scheme  was,   perhaps,  the   best  that  could 
then  be  contrived  :  but  it  was  completely  disconcerted 
by  the  course  which  the  civil  war  took.     The  Houses 
triumphed,  it  is  true  ;  but  not  till  after  such  a  struggle 
as  made  it  necessary  for  them  to  call  into  existence  a 
power  which  they  could  not  control,  and  which  soon 
began  to  domineer  over  all  orders  and  all  parties.     Dur- 
ing a  few  years,  the  evils  inseparable  from  military  gov- 
ernment were,  in  some  degree,  mitigated  by  the  wisdom 
and  magnanimity  of  the  great  liian  who  lield  the  supreme 
command.    But,  when  the  sword  which  he  had  wiehled, 
with  energy  indeed,  but  with  energy  always  guided  by 
good  sense  and  generally  tempered  by  good    nature, 
had  passed  to  captains  who  possessed  neither  his  abili- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  167 

ties  nor  his  virtues,  it  seemed  too  probable  that  order 
and  liberty  would  perish  in  one  ignominious  ruin. 

That  ruin  was  happily  averted.  It  has  been  too 
much  the  practice  of"  writers  zealous  for  freedom  to 
represent  the  Restoration  as  a  disastrous  event,  and 
to  condenni  the  folly  or  baseness  of  that  Convention 
which  recalled  the  royal  family  without  exacting  new 
securities  airainst  maladministration.  Those  who  hold 
this  langiiage  do  not  comprehend  the  real  nature  of  the 
crisis  which  followed  the  deposition  of  Richard  Crom- 
well. Enjiland  was  in  innninent  danger  of  sinkino;  un- 
der  the  tyrann}'  of  a  succession  of  small  men  raised  up 
and  pulled  down  by  military  caprice.  To  deliver  the 
country  from  the  domination  of  the  soldiers  was  the 
first  object  of  every  enlightened  patriot :  but  it  was  an 
object  which,  while  the  soldiers  were  imited,  the  most 
sanguine  could  scarcely  expect  to  attain.  On  a  sud- 
den a  gleam  of  hope  appeared.  General  was  o])[)osed 
to  general,  army  to  army.  On  the  use  which  might  be 
made  of  one  auspicious  moment  depended  the  future 
destiny  of  the  nation.  Our  ancestors  used  that  moment 
well.  They  forgot  old  injuries,  waved  petty  scruples, 
adjourned  to  a  more  convenient  season  all  dispute  about 
the  reforms  which  oui"  institutions  needed,  and  stood 
together.  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads,  E])iscopalians  and 
Presbyterians,  in  firm  xuiion,  for  the  old  laws  of  the 
land  against  militai'v  despotism.  The  exact  partition  of 
power  among  King,  J^ords,  and  Commons,  might  well 
he  postponed  till  it  had  been  decided  whether  England 
shovdd  be  governed  by  King,  Lords,  and  Commons,  or 
by  cuirassiers  and  pikemcn.  Had  the  statesmen  of  the 
Convention  taken  a  different  course,  had  they  held 
long  debates  on  the  principles  of  goverimicnt,  had  they 
drawn  np  a  new  constitution  and  sent  it  to  Charles,  had 


168  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H. 

conferences  been  opened,  had  couriers  been  passing  and 
repassing  during  some  weeks  between  Westminster  and 
the  Netlierlands,  with  projects  and  counterprojects,  re- 
phes  by  Hyde  and  rejoinders  by  Prynne,'the  coahtion 
on  which  the  pubhc  safety  depended  would  have  been 
dissolved :  the  Presbyterians  and  Royalists  would  cer- 
tainly have  quarrelled  :  the  military  fiictions  might  pos- 
sibly have  been  reconciled  :  and  the  misjudging  friends 
of  liberty  might  long  have  regretted,  under  a  rule  worse 
than  that  of  the  worst  Stuart,  the  golden  opportunity 
which  had  been  suffered  to  escape. 

The  old  civil  polity  was,  therefore,  by  the  general 
AboiitioQof  consent  of  both  the  great  parties,  reestab- 
tenuresby      lished.     It   was   ao;ain    exactly   what   it    had 

knight  ser-  »  J 

Vice.  been  when  Charles  the  First,  eighteen  years 

before,  withdrew  from  his  capital.  All  those  acts  of 
the  Long  Parliament  which  had  received  the  royal 
assent  were  admitted  to  be  still  in  full  force.  One 
fresh  concession,  a  concession  in  which  the  Cavaliers 
were  even  more  deeply  interested  than  the  Round- 
heads, was  easily  obtained  from  the  restored  King. 
The  military  tenure  of  land  had  been  originally  created 
as  a  means  of  national  defence.  But  in  the  course 
of  ages  whatever  was  useful  in  the  institution  had  dis- 
appeared ;  and  nothing  was  left  but  ceremonies  and 
grievances.  A  landed  proprietor  who  held  an  estate 
under  the  crown  by  knight  service,  —  and  it  was  thus 
that  most  of  the  soil  of  England  was  held,  —  had  to 
pay  a  large  fine  on  coming  to  his  property.  He  could 
not  alienate  one  acre  without  purchasing  a  license. 
When  he  died,  if  his  domains  descended  to  an  infant, 
the  sovereign  was  guardian,  and  was  not  only  entitled 
to  great  part  of  the  rents  during  the  minority,  but  could 
reqvaire  the  ward,  nnder  heavy  penalties,  to  marry  any 


Cb.  II.]  UNDER    CUARLES    THE    SECOND.  169 

person  of  suitable  rank.  The  chief  bait  which  attracted 
a  needy  sycophant  to  the  court  was  the  hope  of  obtain- 
ing as  the  reward  of  serviHty  and  flattery,  a  royal  letter 
to  an  heiress.  These  abuses  had  perished  with  the 
monarchy.  That  they  should  not  revive  with  it  was 
the  wish  of  every  landed  gentleman  in  the  kingdom. 
They  were,  therefore,  solemnly  abolished  by  statute  ; 
and  no  relic  of  the  ancient  tenures  in  chivalry  was  suf- 
fered to  remain,  except  those  honorary  services  Avhich 
are  still,  at  a  coronation,  rendered  to  the  person  of  the 
sovereign  by  some  lords  of  manors. 

The  troops  were  now  to  be  disbanded.  Fifty  thou- 
sand men,  accustomed  to  the  profession  of  pi<,bandin 
arms,  were  at  once  thrown  on  the  world  :  and  °f  the  army, 
experience  seemed  to  warrant  the  belief  that  this  change 
would  j)roduce  much  misery  and  crime,  that  the  dis- 
chai-ged  veterans  would  be  seen  begging  in  everv  street, 
or  that  they  would  be  driven  by  hunger  to  pillage.  But 
no  such  result  followed.  In  a  few  months  there  re- 
mained not  a  trace  indicating  that  the  most  formidable 
army  in  the  world  had  just  been  absorbed  into  the  mass 
of  the  community.  The  Royalists  themselves  confessed 
that,  in  every  department  of  honest  industry,  the  dis- 
carded warriors  ])rospered  beyond  other  men,  that  none 
was  charged  with  any  theft  or  robbery,  that  none  was 
heard  to  ask  an  alms,  and  that,  if  a  baker,  a  mason, 
or  a  waogoni'r  attracted  notice  by  his  dilio-ence  and 
sobriety,  he  was  in  all  probability  one  of  Oliver's  old 
soldiers. 

The  military  tyranny  had  passed  away  ;  but  it  had 
left  deep  and  enduring  traces  in  the  public  mind.  The 
name  of  a  standing  army  was  long  held  in  abhorrence  : 
and  it  is  remarkable  th:it  this  feeling  was  even  stronger 
among  the  Cavaliers  than  among  the  Roundheads.     It 


170  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H 

ought  to  be  considered  as  a  most  fortunate  circumstance 
that,  when  our  country  was,  for  the  first  and  last  time, 
ruled  by  the  sword,  the  sword  was  in  the  hands,  not  of 
her  legitimate  princes,  but  of  those  rebels  who  slew  the 
King  and  demolished  the  Church.  Had  a  prince,  with 
a  title  as  good  as  that  of  Charles,  commanded  an  army 
as  good  as  that  of  Cromwell,  there  Avould  have  been 
little  hope  indeed  for  the  liberties  of  England.  Happily 
that  instrument  by  which  alone  the  monarchy  could  be 
made  absolute  became  an  object  of  peculiar  horror  and 
disgust  to  the  monarchical  party,  and  long  continued  to 
be  inseparably  associated  in  the  imagination  of  Royal- 
ists and  Prelatists  with  regicide  and  field  preaching. 
A  century  after  the  death  of  Cromwell,  the  Tories  still 
continued  to  clamour  against  every  augmentation  of 
the  regular  soldiery,  and  to  sound  the  praise  of  a 
national  militia.  So  late  as  the  year  1786,  a  minister 
who  enjoyed  no  common  measure  of  their  confidence 
found  it  impossible  to  overcome  their  aversion  to  his 
scheme  of  fortifying  the  coast :  nor  did  they  ever  look 
with  entire  complacency  on  the  standing  army,  till  the 
French  Revolution  gave  a  new  direction  to  their  appre- 
hensions. 

The  coalition  which  had  restored  the  King  termi- 
DLsputes  be-  natcd   with   the  danger   from    which    it  had 

tween  the  .,  i  m 

Roundheads  spruug ;  and  two  hostile  parties  again  ap- 
liers  renewed,  pearcd  ready  for  conflict.  Both  indeed  were 
agreed  as  to  the  propriety  of  inflicting  punishment 
on  some  unhappy  men  who  were,  at  that  moment, 
objects  of  almost  universal  hatred.  Cromwell  was  no 
more  ;  and  those  who  had  fled  before  him  were  forced 
to  content  themselves  with  the  miserable  satisfiiction 
of  digging  up,  hanging,  quartering,  and  burning  the 
remains  of  the  greatest  prince  that  has  ever  ruled  Eng- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  171 

land.  Otlier  objects  of  vengeance,  few  indeed,  yet  too 
many,  were  found  among  the  republican  chiefs.  Soon, 
however,  the  conquerors,  glutted  with  the  blood  of  the 
regicides,  turned  against  each  other.  The  Roundheads, 
while  admitting  the  virtues  of  the  late  King,  and  while 
condemning  the  sentence  passed  upon  him  by  an  illegal 
tribunal,  yet  maintained  that  his  administration  had 
been,  in  many  things,  unconstitutional,  and  that  the 
Houses  had  taken  arms  against  him  from  cjood  motives 
and  on  strong  grounds.  The  monarchy,  these  poli- 
ticians conceived,  had  no  worse  enemy  than  the  flat- 
terer who  exalted  the  prerogative  above  the  law,  who 
condemned  all  opposition  to  regal  encroachments,  and 
who  reviled,  not  only  Cromwell  and  Harrison,  but  Pyra 
and  Hampden,  as  traitors.  If  the  King  wished  for  a 
quiet  and  prosperous  reign,  he  must  confide  in  those 
who,  though  they  had  drawn  the  sword  in  defence  of 
the  invaded  privileges  of  Parliament,  had  yet  exposed 
themselves  to  the  rage  of  the  soldiers  in  order  to  save 
his  father,  and  had  taken  the  chief  part  in  bringing 
back  the  royal  family. 

The  feeling  of  the  Cavaliers  was  widely  different. 
During  eighteen  years  they  had,  through  all  vicissi- 
tudes, been  faithful  to  the  crown.  Having  shared  the 
distress  of  their  prince,  were  they  not  to  share  his 
triumph  ?  Was  no  distinction  to  be  made  between 
them  and  the  disloyal  subject  who  had  fought  against 
his  rightful  sovereio;n,  who  had  adhered  to  Richard 
Cromwell,  and  who  had  never  concurred  in  the  resto- 
ration of  the  Stuarts,  till  it  ap])eared  that  nothing  else 
could  save  the  nation  from  the  tyranny  of  the  army  ? 
Grant  that  such  a  man  had,  by  his  recent  services, 
fairly  earned  his  pardon.  Yet  were  his  services,  ren- 
dered at  the  eleventh  hour,  to  be  put  in  comparison 


172  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H 

with  the  toils  and  sufferings  of  those  who  had  borne 
the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day  ?  Was  he  to  be  ranked 
with  men  who  had  no  need  of  the  royal  clemency,  with 
men  who  had,  in  every  part  of  their  lives,  merited  the 
royal  gratitude  ?  Above  all,  was  he  to  be  suffered  to 
retain  a  fortune  raised  out  of  the  substance  of  the 
ruined  defenders  of  the  thi'one  ?  Was  it  not  enoujrh 
that  his  head  and  his  patrimonial  estate,  a  hundred 
times  forfeited  to  justice,  were  secure,  and  that  he 
shared,  with  the  rest  of  the  nation,  in  the  blessings  of 
that  mild  government  of  which  he  had  long  been  the 
foe  ?  Was  it  necessary  that  he  should  be  rewarded  for 
his  treason  at  the  expense  of  men  whose  only  crime  was 
the  fidelity  with  which  they  had  observed  their  oath  of 
allegiance  ?  And  what  interest  had  the  King  in  gorg- 
ing his  old  enemies  with  prey  torn  from  his  old  friends  ? 
What  confidence  could  be  placed  in  men  who  had  op- 
posed their  sovereign,  made  war  on  him,  imprisoned 
him,  and  who,  even  now,  instead  of  hann-ino;  down 
their  heads  in  shame  and  contrition,  vindicated  all  that 
they  had  done,  and  seemed  to  think  that  they  had  given 
an  illustrious  proof  of  loyalty  by  just  stopping  short  of 
regicide  ?  It  was  true  that  they  had  lately  assisted  to 
set  up  the  throne  :  but  it  was  not  less  true  that  they 
had  previously  pulled  it  down,  and  that  they  still 
avowed  principles  which  might  impel  them  to  pull  it 
down  again.  Undoubtedly  it  might  be  fit  that  marks 
of  royal  approbation  should  be  bestowed  on  some  con- 
verts who  had  been  eminently  useful :  but  policy,  as 
well  as  justice  and  gratitude,  enjoined  the  King  to  give 
the  highest  place  in  his  regard  to  those  who,  from  first 
to  last,  through  good  and  evil,  had  stood  by  his  house. 
On  these  grounds  the  Cavaliers  very  naturally  de- 
manded indemnity  for  all  that  they  had  sxiffered,  and 


I 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  173 

preference  in  the  distribution  of  the  favours  of  the 
crown.  Some  violent  members  of  the  party  went  fur- 
ther, and  clamoured  for  large  categories  of  proscrij)tion. 
The  political  feud  was,  as  usual,  exasperated  by  a 
religious  feud.  The  King  found  the  Church  Religious 
in  a  sincrular  state.  A  short  time  before  the  'i^'^'^ension. 
commencement  of  the  civil  war,  his  father  had  mven  a 
reluctant  assent  to  a  bill,  strongly  supj)orted  by  Falk- 
land, which  deprived  the  Bishops  of  their  seats  in  the 
House  of  Lords  :  but  Episcopacy  and  the  Liturgy  had 
never  been  abolished  by  law.  The  Long  Parliament, 
however,  had  passed  ordinances  which  had  made  a  com- 
plete revolution  in  Church  government  and  in  public 
worship.  The  new  system  was,  in  princi])le,  scarcely 
less  Erastian  than  that  which  it  dis])laced.  Tiie  Houses, 
guided  chiefly  by  the  counsels  of  the  accomplished  Sel- 
den,  had  determined  to  keep  the  spiritual  power  strictly 
subordinate  to  the  temporal  power.  They  had  refused 
to  declare  that  any  form  of  ecclesiastical  polity  was  of 
divine  origin  ;  and  they  had  provided  that,  from  all  the 
Church  courts,  an  appeal  should  lie  in  the  last  resort  to 
Tarliament.  With  this  highly  imj)ortant  reservation 
it  had  been  resolved  to  set  up  in  England  a  hierarchy 
closely  resembling  that  wliich  now  exists  in  Scotland. 
The  authority  of  councils,  rising  one  above  another  in 
regular  gradation,  was  substituted  for  the  authority  of 
Bishops  and  Archbishops.  The  Liturgy  gave  place  to 
the  Presbyterian  directory.  But  scarcely  had  the  new 
regulations  been  framed,  when  the  Indejiendents  rose 
to  supreme  influence  in  the  state.  Tiie  Iude])endents 
had  no  disposition  to  enforce  the  ordinances  touching 
classical,  provincial,  and  national  synods.  Those  orth- 
nances,  therefore,  were  never  carried  into  full  execu- 
tion.    The  Presbyterian  system  was  fully  established 


174  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cii.  II 

nowhere  but  in  Middlesex  and  Lancashire.  In  the 
other  fifty  counties,  almost  eveiy  parish  seems  to  have 
been  unconnected  with  the  neighbouring  parishes.  In 
some  districts,  indeed,  the  ministers  formed  themselves 
into  voluntary  associations,  for  the  purpose  of  mutual 
help  and  counsel ;  but  these  associations  had  no  coer- 
cive power.  The  patrons  of  livings,  being  now  checked 
by  neither  Bishop  nor  Presbytery,  would  have  been  at 
liberty  to  confide  the  cure  of  souls  to  the  most  scanda- 
lous of  mankind,  but  for  tlie  arbitrary  intervention  of 
Oliver.  He  established,  by  his  own  authority,  a  board 
of  commissioners,  called  Triers.  Most  of  these  persons 
were  Independent  divines  ;  but  a  few  Presbyterian  min- 
isters and  a  few  laymen  had  seats.  The  certificate  of 
the  Triers  stood  in  the  place  both  of  institution  and  of 
induction  ;  and  without  such  a  certificate  no  person 
could  hold  g,  benefice.  This  was  undoubtedly  one  of 
the  most  despotic  acts  ever  done  by  any  English  ruler. 
Yet,  as  it  was  generally  felt  that,  without  some  such 
precaution,  the  country  would  be  overrun  by  ignorant 
and  drunken  reprobates,  bearing  the  name  and  receiv- 
ing the  pay  of  ministers,  some  highly  respectable  per- 
sons, who  were  not  in  general  friendly  to  Cromwell, 
allowed  that,  on  this  occasion,  he  had  been  a  public 
benefactor.  The  presentees  whom  the  Triers  had  ap- 
proved took  possession  of  the  rectories,  cultivated  the 
glebe  lands,  collected  tlie  tithes,  prayed  without  book 
or  suii)lice,  and  administered  the  Eucharist  to  commu- 
nicants seated  at  loner  tables. 

Thus  the  ecclesiastical  polity  of  the  realm  was  in 
inextricable  confusion.  Episcopacy  was  the  form  of 
government  prescribed  by  the  old  law  which  was  still 
unrepealed.  The  form  of  government  prescribed  by 
parliamentary  ordinance  was  Presbyterian.    But  neither 


Ch.  II.]  under   CHARLES    THE    SECOND.  175 

the  old  law  nor  the  parliainentary  oi'dinance  was  prac- 
tically in  force.  The  Church  actually  established  may 
be  described  as  an  irregular  body  made  up  of  a  few 
Presbyteries,  and  of  many  Independent  connregations, 
which  were  all  held  down  and  held  tojxether  by  the 
authority  of  the  government. 

Of  those  who  had  been  active  in  brino-inir  back  the 
King,  many  were  zealous  for  synods  and  for  the  direc- 
tory, and  many  were  desirous  to  terminate  by  a  com- 
promise the  religious  dissensions  which  had  long  agitated 
England.  Between  the  bigoted  followers  of  Laud  and 
the  bigoted  followers  of  Knox  there  could  be  neither 
peace  nor  truce  :  but  it  did  not  seem  im|)ossible  to  effect 
an  accommodation  between  the  moderate  Episcopalians 
of  the  school  of  Usher  and  the  moderate  Presbyterians 
of  the  school  of  Baxter.  The  moderate  Episcopalians 
would  admit  that  a  Bishop  might  lawfully  be  assisted 
by  a  council.  The  moderate  Presbyterians  would  not 
deny  that  each  provincial  assembly  might  lawfully  have 
a  permanent  president,  and  that  this  president  mi<T;ht 
lawfully  be  called  a  Bishop.  There  might  be  a  revised 
Liturgy  which  should  not  exclude  extemporaneous 
prayer,  a  baptismal  service  in  which  the  sign  of  the 
cross  might  be  used  or  omitted  at  discretion,  a  com- 
munion service  at  which  the  faithful  might  sit  if  their 
consciences  forbade  tlieni  to  kneel.  But  to  no  such 
plan  could  tlio  great  body  of  the  Cavaliers  listen  with 
patience.  The  religious  members  of  that  party  were 
^conscientiously  attached  to  the  whole  system  of  their 
Church.  She  had  been  dear  to  their  nunxlered  King. 
She  had  consoled  them  in  defeat  and  ]K'nury.  Her 
service,  so  often  whisj)ered  in  an  inner  cliamber  during 
the  season  of  trial,  had  such  a  charm  for  them  that  they 
were  unwilling  to  part  with  a  single  response.     Other 


176  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

Royalists,  who  made  little  pretence  to  piety,  yet  loved 
the  episcopal  Church  because  she  was  the  foe  of  their 
foes.  They  valued  a  pi-ayer  or  a  ceremony,  not  on  ac- 
count of  the  comfort  which  it  conveyed  to  themselves, 
but  on  account  of  the  vexation  which  it  gave  to  the 
Roundheads,  and  were  so  far  from  being  disposed  to 
purchase  union  by  concession  that  they  objected  to  con* 
cession  chiefly  because  it  tended  to  pi'oduce  union. 

Such  feelings,  though  blamable,  were  natuial  and  not 
Unpopularity  whollv  incxcusable.     The  Puritans  in  the  day 

of  the  Puri-        PI.  111111-  1 

tans.  or  their  power  had  undoubteclly  given  cruel 

provocation.  They  ought  to  have  learned,  if  from 
nothing  else,  yet  from  their  own  discontents,  from  their 
own  straggles,  from  their  own  victory,  fi*om  the  fall  of 
that  proud  hierarchy  by  which  they  had  been  so  heavily 
opj)ressed,  that,  in  England,  and  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  it  was  not  in  the  power  of  the  civil  magistrate 
to  drill  the  minds  of  men  into  conformity  with  his  own 
system  of  theology.  They  proved,  however,  as  intol- 
erant and  as  meddling  as  ever  Laud  had  been.  They 
interdicted  under  heavy  penalties  the  use  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer,  not  only  in  churches,  but  even  in 
private  houses.  It  was  a  crime  in  a  child  to  read  by 
the  bedside  of  a  sick  parent  one  of  those  beautiful  col- 
lects which  had  soothed  the  griefs  of  forty  generations 
of  Christians.  Severe  punishments  were  denounced 
against  such  as  should  presume  to  blame  the  Calvinistic 
mode  of  worship.  Clergymen  of  respectable  character 
were  not  only  ejected  from  their  benefices  by  thou- 
sands, but  were  frequently  exposed  to  the  outrages  of  a 
fanatical  rabble.  Churches  and  sepulchres,  fine  works 
of  art  and  curious  remains  of  antiquity,  were  brutally 
defaced.  The  Parliament  resolved  that  all  pictures  in 
the   royal    collection   which    contained  representations 


Ch.  D.]  under   CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  177 

of  Jesus  or  of  the  Virgin  Mother  should  bu  burned. 
Sculpture  tared  as  ill  as  painting.  Nymphs  and  Graces, 
the  work  of  Ionian  chisels,  were  delivered  over  to  Pu- 
ritan stonemasons  to  be  made  decent.  Ao-ahist  the 
lighter  vices  the  ruling  faction  waged  war  with  a  zeal 
little  tempered  by  humanity  or  by  common  sense. 
Sharp  laws  were  passed  against  betting.  It  was  en- 
acted that  adultery  should  be  punished  with  death. 
The  illicit  intercourse  of  the  sexes,  even  where  neither 
violence  nor  seduction  was  imputed,  where  no  public 
scandal  was  given,  where  no  conjugal  right  was  vio- 
lated, was  made  a  misdemeanour.  Public  amusements, 
from  the  masques  which  were  exhibited  at  the  man- 
sions of  the  great  down  to  the  wrestling  matches  and 
grinning  matches  on  village  greens,  were  vigorously 
attacked.  One  ordinance  dii-ected  that  all  the  May- 
poles in  England  should  forthwith  be  hewn  down. 
Another  proscribed  all  theati-ical  diversions.  The  j)Iay- 
houses  were  to  be  dismantled,  the  spectators  fined,  the 
actors  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail.  Roj)edancing,  pup- 
petshows,  bowls,  horseracing,  were  regarded  with  no 
friendly  eye.  But  bearbaiting,  then  a  favourite  diver- 
sion of  high  and  low,  was  the  abomination  which  most 
strongly  stirred  the  wrath  of  the  austere  sectaries.  It  is 
to  be  remarked  that  their  antii)athy  to  this  sport  had  noth- 
ing in  conunon  with  the  feeling  which  has,  in  our  own 
time,  induced  the  legislature  to  interfere  for  the  purpose 
of  protecting  beasts  against  the  wanton  cruelty  of  men. 
The  Puritan  hated  bearbaiting,  not  because  it  gave  pain 
to  the  bear,  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  specta- 
tors. Indeed,  he  generally  contrived  to  enjoy  the  double 
pleasure  of  tormenting  both  s[)ectators  and  bear.' 

1  IIow  little  compassion  for  the  bear  had  to  do  with  the  matter  is  suffi- 
ciently proved  by  the  Cullowiii^  extract  from  a  paper  entitled  A  perfect 
VOL.   I.  12 


178  ^        HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

Perhaps  no  single  circumstance  more  strongly  illus- 
trates the  temper  of  the  precisians  than  their  conduct 
respecting  Christmas  day.  Cliristmas  h.ad  been,  from 
time  immemorial,  the  season  of  joy  and  domestic  affec- 
tion, the  season  when  families  assembled,  when  children 
came  home  from  school,  when  quarrels  were  made  up. 
when  carols  were  heard  in  every  street,  when  every 
house  was  decorated  with  evergreens,  and  every  table 
was  loaded  with  good  cheer.  At  that  season  all  hearts 
not  utterly  destitute  of  kindness  were  enlarged  and 
softened.  At  that  season  the  poor  were  admitted  to 
partake  largely  of  the  overflowings  of  the  wealth  of  the 
rich,  whose  bounty  was  peculiarly  acceptable  on  ac- 
count of  the  shortness  of  the  days  and  of  the  severity 
of  the  weather.  At  that  season  the  intei'val  between 
landlord  and  tenant,  master  and  servant,  was  less 
marked  than  through  the  rest  of  the  year.  Where 
there  is  much  enjoyment  there  will  be  some  excess : 
yet,  on  the  whole,  the  spirit  in  which  the  holiday  was 
kept  was  not  unworthy  of  a  Christian  festival.     The 

Diurnal  of  some  Passages  of  Parliament,  and  from  other  Parts  of  the  King- 
dom, from  Monday  July  24th,  to  Jlonday  July  31st,  1643.  "  Upon  the 
queen's  coming  from  Holland,  slie  brought  with  her,  besides  a  company  of 
savagelike  ruilians,  a  company  of  savage  bears,  to  what  purpose  vou  may 
judge  by  the  sequel.  Those  bears  were  left  about  Newark,  and  were 
brought  into  country  towns  constantly  on  the  Lord's  day  to  be  baited,  such 
is  the  religion  those  here  related  would  setlle  amongst  us;  and,  if  any  went 
about  to  hinder  or  but  speak  against  their  damnable  profanations,  they  were 
presently  noted  as  Roundheads  and  Puritans,  and  sure  to  be  plundered  for 
it.  But  some  of  Colonel  Cromwell's  forces  coming  by  accident  into  Upping- 
ham town,  in  Rutland,  on  the  Lord's  day,  found  these  bears  playing  there 
in  the  usual  manner,  and,  in  the  height  of  their  sport,  caused  them  to  be 
seized  upon,  tied  to  a  tree  and  shot."  This  was  by  no  means  a  solitary  in- 
stance. Colonel  Pride,  when  Sheriff  of  Surrey,  ordered  the  beasts  in  the 
bear  garden  of  Southwark  to  be  killed.  He  is  represented  by  a  loyal  satirist 
as  defending  the  act  thus:  —  "  The  tirst  thing  that  is  upon  my  spirits  is  the 
killing  of  tiie  bears,  for  which  the  people  hate  me,  and  call  me  all  the  names 
in  the  rainbow.  But  did  not  David  kill  a  bear?  Did  not  the  Lord  Deputy 
Ireton  kill  a  bear?  Did  not  another  lord  of  ours  kill  five  bears?  "  —  Last 
Speech  and  dying  Words  of  Thomas  Pride. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  179 

Long  rarliainent  gave  orders,  in  1044,  that  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  December  sJioukl  be  strictly  observed  as  a  fast, 
and  that  all  men  should  pass  it  in  humbly  bemoaning 
the  great  national  sin  which  they  and  their  fathers  had 
so  often  committed  on  that  day  by  romping  under  the 
mistletoe,  eating  boar's  head,  and  drinking  ale  flavoured 
with  roasted  aj)ples.  No  public  act  of  that  time  seems 
to  have  irritated  the  common  people  more.  On  the 
next  anniversary  of  the  festival  formidable  riots  broke 
out  in  many  places.  The  constables  were  resisted,  the 
maoistrates  insulted,  the  houses  of  noted  zealots  at- 
tacked,  and  the  proscribed  service  of  the  day  openly 
read  in  the  churches. 

Such  was  the  sj)irit  of  the  extreme  Puritans,  both 
Presbyterian  and  Independent.  Oliver,  indeed,  was 
little  disposed  to  be  either  a  persecutor  or  a  meddler. 
But  Oliver,  the  head  of  a  party,  and  consequently,  to 
a  great  extent,  the  slave  of  a  party,  could  not  govern 
altoirether  accordino;  to  his  own  inclinations.  Even 
under  his  administration  many  magistrates,  witliin  their 
own  jurisdiction,  made  themselves  as  odious  as  Sir  Hu- 
dibras,  interfered  with  all  the  pleasures  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, dispersed  festive  meetings,  and  j)ut  fiddlers 
in  the  stocks.  Still  more  formidable  was  the  zeal  of 
the  soldiers.  In  every  village  where  they  appeared 
there  was  an  end  of  dancing,  bellringing,  and  hockey. 
In  London  they  several  times  interrupted  theatrical 
performances  at  which  the  Protector  had  the  judgment 
and  eood  nature  to  coimive. 

With  the  fear  and  hatred  inspired  by  such  a  tyranny 
contem])t  was  largely  mingled.  The  peculiarities  of 
the  Puritan,  his  look,  his  dress,  his  dialect,  his  strange 
scruj)les,  had  been,  ever  since  the  time  of  Elizabeth, 
favourite  subjects  with  mockers.     But  these  peculiar!- 


180  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch,  II. 

ties  appeared  far  more  grotesque  in  a  faction  Avliich 
ruled  a  great  empire  than  in  obscure  and  persecuted 
congregations.  The  cant  which  had  moved  laughter 
when  it  was  heard  on  the  stage  from  Tribulation 
Wholesome,  and  Zeal-of-the-Land  Busy,  was  still  more 
laughable  when  it  proceeded  fi'om  the  lips  of  Generals 
and  Councillors  of  state.  It  is  also  to  be  noted  that 
during  the  civil  troubles  several  sects  had  sprung  into 
existence,  whose  eccentricities  surpassed  anything  that 
had  before  been  seen  in  England.  A  mad  tailor, 
named  Lodowick  Muggleton,  wandered  from  pothouse 
to  pothouse,  tippling  ale,  and  denouncing  eternal  tor- 
ments against  those  who  refused  to  believe,  on  his  tes- 
timony, that  the  Supreme  Being  was  only  six  feet  high, 
and  that  the  sun  was  just  four  miles  from  the  earth. ^ 
George  Fox  had  raised  a  tempest  of  derision  by  pro- 
claiming that  it  was  a  violation  of  Christian  sincerity 
to  designate  a  single  person  by  a  plural  pronoun,  and 
that  it  was  an  idolatrous  homage  to  Janus  and  Woden 
to  talk  about  January  and  Wednesday.  His  doctrine, 
a  few  years  later,  was  embraced  by  some  eminent 
men,  and  rose  greatly  in  the  public  estimation.  But 
at  the  time  of  the  Restoration  the  Quakers  were  popu- 
larly regarded  as  the  most  despicable  of  fanatics.  By 
the  Puritans  they  were  treated  with  severity  here, 
and  were  persecuted  to  the  death  in  New  England. 
Nevertheless  the  public,  which  seldom  makes  nice 
distinctions,  often  confounded  the  Puritan  with  the 
Quaker.  Both  were  schismatics.  Both  hated  episco- 
pacy and  the  Liturgy.  Both  had  what  seemed  ex- 
travagant whimsies  about  dress,  diversions,  and  pos- 
tures.    Widely  as   the   two   differed  in  opinion,  they 

1  See  Penn's  New  Witnesses   proved   Old   Heretics,  and  Muggleton'i 
worlis,  2>(tssini. 


Ch.  II]       under  CHARLES  THE  SECOND.        181 

were  popularly  classed  together  as  canting  schismat- 
ics ;  and  whatever  was  ridiculous  or  odious  in  either 
increased  the  scorn  and  aversion  which  the  nmltitude 
felt  for  both. 

Before  the  civil  wars,  even  those  who  most  disliked 
the  opinions  and  manners  of  the  Puritan  were  forced 
to  admit  that  his  moral  conduct  was  generally,  in  es- 
sentials, blameless  ;  but  this  praise  was  now  no  longer 
bestowed,  and,  unfortunately,  was  no  longer  deserved. 
The  general  fate  of  sects  is  to  obtain  a  high  reputation 
for  sanctity  while  they  are  oppressed,  and  to  lose  it  as 
soon  as  they  become  powerful  :  and  the  reason  is 
obvious.  It  is  seldom  that  a  man  in  rolls  himself  in  a 
proscribed  body  from  any  but  conscientious  motives. 
Such  a  body,  therefore,  is  composed,  with  scarcely 
an  exception,  of  sincere  persons.  The  most  rigid  dis- 
cipline that  can  be  enforced  within  a  religious  society 
is  a  very  feeble  instrument  of  purification,  when  com- 
pared with  a  little  sharp  persecution  from  without. 
We  may  be  certain  that  very  few  persons,  not  seri- 
ously impressed  by  religioiis  convictions,  applied  for 
baptism  while  Diocletian  was  vexing  the  Church,  or 
ioined  themselves  to  Protestant  conirreirations  at  the 
risk  of  being  burned  by  Bonner.  But,  Avhen  a  sect 
becomes  ])owerful,  when  its  favour  is  the  road  to  riches 
and  dignities,  worldly  and  ambitious  men  crowd  into  it, 
talk  its  language,  conform  strictly  to  its  ritual,  mimic; 
its  peculiarities,  and  frequently  go  beyond  its  honest 
members  in  all  the  outward  indications  of  zeal.  No 
discernment,  no  watchfulness,  on  the  part  of  ecclesias- 
tical rulers,  can  prevent  the  intrusion  of  such  false 
brethren.  The  tares  and  the  wheat  must  o;row  to- 
gether.  Soon  the  world  begins  to  find  out  that  the 
godly  are  not  better  than  other  men,  and  argues,  with 


182  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

some  justice,  tliat,  if  not  better,  they  must  be  much 
worse.  In  no  lone;  time  all  those  signs  which  were 
formerlv  regarded  as  cliaracteristic  of  a  saint  are  re- 
garded  as  characteristic  of  a  knave. 

Thus  it  was  with  the  English  Nonconformists.  They 
had  been  oppressed  ;  and  oppression  had  kept  them  a 
pure  body.  They  then  became  supreme  in  the  state. 
No  man  could  hope  to  rise  to  eminence  and  command 
but  by  their  favour.  Their  favour  was  to  be  gained 
only  by  exchanging  with  them  the  signs  and  passwords 
of  spiritual  fraternity.  One  of  the  first  resolutions 
adopted  by  Barebone's  Parliament,  the  most  intensely 
Puritanical  of  all  our  political  assemblies,  was  that  no 
person  should  be  admitted  into  the  public  service  till 
the  House  should  be  satisfied  of  his  real  godliness. 
What  were  then  considered  as  the  signs  of  real  godli- 
ness, the  sad  coloured  dress,  the  sour  look,  the  straight 
hair,  the  nasal  whine,  the  speech  interspersed  with 
quaint  texts,  the  Sunday,  gloomy  as  a  Pliarisaicid 
Sabbath,  were  easily  imitated  by  men  to  whom  all 
religions  were  the  same.  The  sincere  Puritans  soon 
found  themselves  lost  in  a  multitude,  not  merely  of 
men  of  the  world,  but  of  the  very  worst  sort  of  men 
of  the  world.  For  the  most  notorious  libertine  who 
had  fought  under  the  royal  standard  might  justly  be 
thought  virtuous  when  compared  with  some  of  those 
who,  while  they  talked  about  sweet  experiences  and 
comfortable  scriptures,  lived  in  the  constant  practice 
of  fraud,  rapacity,  and  secret  debauchery.  The  peo- 
ple, with  a  rashness  which  we  may  justly  regret,  but 
at  which  we  cannot  wonder,  formed  their  estimate  of 
the  whole  body  from  these  hypocrites.  The  theology, 
the  manners,  the  dialect  of  the  Puritan  were  thus  as- 
sociated in  the  public  mind  with  the  darkest  and  mean- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  183 

est  vices.  As  soon  as  the  Restoration  liad  made  it  safe 
to  avow  enmity  to  the  party  which  had  so  long  been 
predominant  in  the  state,  a  general  outcry  against  Pu- 
ritanism rose  from  every  corner  of  the  kingdom,  and 
was  often  swollen  by  the  voices  of  those  very  dissem- 
blers whose  villany  had  brought  disgrace  on  the  Puri- 
tan name. 

Thus  the  two  great  parties,  which,  after  a  long  con- 
test, had  for  a  moment  concurred  in  restoring  mon- 
archy, were,  both  in  politics  and  in  religion,  again  op- 
posed to  each  other.  The  great  body  of  the  nation 
leaned  to  the  Royalists.  The  crimes  of  Strafford  and 
Laud,  the  excesses  of  the  Star  Chamber  and  of  the 
Hio'h  Commission,  the  m'^^at  services  which  the  Long 
Parliament  had,  during  the  first  year  of  its  existence, 
rendered  to  the  state,  had  faded  from  the  minds  of  men. 
The  execution  of  Charles  the  First,  the  sullen  tyranny 
of  the  Rumj),  the  violence  of  the  army,  were  remem- 
bered with  loathing ;  and  the  multitude  was  inclined  to 
hold  all  who  had  withstood  the  late  King  responsible 
for  his  death  and  for  the  subsequent  disasters. 

The  House  of  Commons,  having  been  elected  "w  hile 
the  Presbyterians  were  dominant,  by  no  means  repre- 
sented the  general  sense  of  the  })eo])le.  Most  of  the 
members,  while  execrating  Cromwell  and  Bradshaw, 
reverenced  the  memory  of  Essex  and  of  Pym.  One 
sturdy  Cavalier,  who  ventured  to  declare  that  all  who 
luul  drawn  the  sword  against  Charles  the  First  were 
as  much  traitors  as  those  who  cut  oif  his  head,  was 
called  to  order,  placed  at  the  bar,  and  rejirimanded 
by  the  Speaker.  The  general  wish  of  tlie  House  un- 
doubtedly was  to  settle  the  ecclesiastical  disputes  in  a 
maimer  satisfactory  to  the  moderate  Puritans.  But  to 
such  a  settlement  both  the  court  and  the  luition  were 
averse. 


184  HISTORY    OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

The  restored  King  was  at  this  time  more  loved  by 
Character  of  ^^^^  people  than  any  of  his  predecessors  had 
Charles  11.      ^^^^^,  ^^^^^^     rpj^^  Calamities  of  his  house,  the 

heroic  death  of  his  father,  his  own  long  sufferings  and 
romantic  adventures,  made  him  an  object  of  tender  in- 
terest. His  return  had  delivered  the  country  from  an 
intolerable  bondage.  Recalled  by  the  voice  of  both  the 
contending  factions,  he  was  in  a  position  which  enabled 
him  to  arbitrate  between  them  ;  and  in  some  respects 
he  was  well  qualified  for  the  task.  He  had  received 
from  nature  excellent  parts  and  a  hap]:>y  temper.  His 
education  had  been  such  as  might  have  been  expected  to 
develope  his  understanding,  and  to  form  him  to  the  prac- 
tice of  every  public  and  private  virtue.  He  had  passed 
through  all  varieties  of  fortune,  and  had  seen  both  sides 
of  human  nature.  He  had,  Avhile  very  young,  been 
driven  forth  from  a  palace  to  a  life  of  exile,  penury,  and 
danger.  He  had,  at  the  age  when  the  mind  and  body 
are  in  their  highest  perfection,  and  when  the  first  effer- 
vescence of  boyish  passions  should  have  subsided,  been 
recalled  from  his  wanderings  to  wear  a  crown.  He 
had  been  taught  by  bitter  experience  how  much  base- 
ness, perfidy,  and  ingratitude  may  lie  hid  under  the 
obsequious  demeanour  of  courtiers.  He  had  found,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  the  huts  of  the  poorest,  true  nobility 
of  soul.  When  wealth  was  offered  to  any  who  would 
betray  him,  when  death  was  denounced  against  all  who 
should  shelter  him,  cottagers  and  serving  men  had  kept 
his  secret  truly,  and  had  kissed  his  hand  under  his 
mean  disguises  with  as  much  reverence  as  if  he  had 
been  seated  on  his  ancestral  throne.  From  ;ach  a 
school  it  might  have  been  expected  that  a  young  man 
who  wanted  neither  abilities  nor  amiable  qualities  would 
have  come  forth  a  great  and  good  King.    Charles  came 


Cn.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  185 

forth  from  that  school  with  social  habits,  with  pohte 
and  engaging  manners,  and  with  some  talent  for  lively 
conversation,  addicted  beyond  measure  to  sensual  in- 
dulgence, fond  of  sauntering  and  of  frivolous  amuse- 
ments, inca[)able  of  selfdenial  and  of  exertion,  without 
fiiith  in  human  virtue  or  in  human  attachment,  with- 
out desire  of  renown,  and  without  sensibility  to  re- 
j)roach.  According  to  him,  every  person  was  to  be 
bought :  but  some  people  haggled  more  about  their 
price  than  others  ;  and  Avhen  this  hagghng  was  very 
obstinate  and  very  skilful  it  was  called  by  some  fine 
name.  The  chief  trick  by  which  clever  men  kept  up 
the  j)rice  of  their  abilities  was  called  integrity.  The 
chief  trick  by  which  handsome  women  kept  up  the 
price  of  their  beauty  Avas  called  modesty.  Tiie  love 
of  God,  the  love  of  country,  the  love  of  family,  the  love 
of  friends,  were  phrases  of  the  same  sort,  delicate  and 
convenient  synonymes  for  the  love  of  self.  Thinking 
thus  of  mankind,  Charles  naturally  cared  very  little 
A^hat  they  thought  of  him.  Honour  and  shame  were 
scarcely  more  to  him  than  light  and  darkness  to  the 
blind.  His  contempt  of  flattery  has  been  highly  com- 
mended, but  seems,  when  viewed  in  connection  with 
tlie  rest  of  his  character,  to  deserve  no  commendation. 
It  is  possible  to  be  below  flattery  as  well  as  above  it. 
One  who  trusts  nobody  will  not  trust  syco})hants.  One 
who  does  not  value  real  glory  will  not  value  its  coun- 
terfeit. 

It  is  creditable  to  Charles's  temper  that,  ill  as  he 
thought  of  his  species,  he  never  became  a  misanthrope. 
He  saw  little  in  men  but  what  was  hateful.  Yet  he 
did  not  Jiate  them.  Nay,  he  was  so  for  humane  tliat  it 
was  highly  disagreeable  to  him  to  see  their  suflerings 
or  to  hear  their  complaints.      This  however  is  a  sort  of 


186  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ck.  II 

hump.nity  whicli,  tliougli  amiable  and  laudable  in  a  pri- 
vate man  whose  power  to  help  or  hurt  is  bounded  by 
a  narrow  circle,  has  in  ])rinces  often  been  rather  a  vice 
than  a  virtue.  More  than  onfr-well  disposed  ruler  has 
given  up  whole  provinces  to  rapine  and  oppression, 
merely  from  a  wish  to  see  none  but  happy  faces  round 
his  own  board  and  in  his  own  walks.  No  man  is  fit  to 
govern  great  societies  who  hesitates  about  disobliging 
the  few  who  have  access  to  him  for  the  sake  of  the 
many  whom  he  will  never  see.  The  facility  of  Charles 
was  such  as  has  perhaps  never  been  found  in  any  man 
of  equal  sense.  He  was  a  slave  without  being  a  dupe. 
Worthless  men  and  women  to  the  very  bottom  of  whose 
hearts  he  saw,  and  whom  he  knew  to  be  destitute  of 
affection  for  him  and  undeserving  of  his  confidence, 
could  easily  wheedle  him  out  of  titles,  places,  domains, 
state  secrets  and  pardons.  He  bestowed  much  ;  yet  he 
neither  enjoyed  the  pleasure  nor  acquii'ed  the  fame  of 
beneficence.  He  never  gave  spontaneously  ;  but  it  was 
painful  to  him  to  refuse.  The  consequence  Avas  that 
his  bounty  generally  went,  not  to  those  who  deserved 
it  best,  nor  even  to  those  whom  he  liked  best,  but  to 
the  most  shameless  and  importunate  suitor  who  could 
obtain  an  audience. 

The  motives  which  governed  the  political  conduct 
of  Charles  the  Second  differed  widely  from  those  by 
which  his  predecessor  and  his  successor  were  actuated. 
He  was  not  a  man  to  be  imposed  upon  by  the  patri- 
archal theory  of  government  and  the  doctrine  of  divine 
right.  He  was  utterly  without  ambition.  He  detested 
business,  and  would  sooner  have  abdicated  his  crown 
than  have  undergone  the  trouble  of  really  directing 
the  administration.  Such  was  his  aversion  to  toil,  and 
such  his  ignorance  of  affairs,  that  the  very  clerks  who 


Ch.  II  j  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  187 

attended  hiin  when  he  sate  in  council  could  not  re- 
frain from  sneering  at  his  frivolous  remarks,  and  at 
his  childish  impatience.  Neither  gratitude  nor  revenge 
had  anv  share  in  determinino;  liis  course  :  for  never 
was  there  a  mind  on  which  both  services  and  injuries 
left  such  faint  and  transitory  impressions.  He  wished 
merely  to  be  a  King  such  as  Lewis  tlie  Fifteenth  of 
France  afterwards  was  ;  a  King  who  could  draw  with- 
out limit  on  tlie  treasurv  for  tlie  eratification  of  liis 
private  tastes,  who  could  hire  with  wealth  and  honours 
persons  capable  of  assisting  him  to  kill  the  time,  and 
who,  even  when  the  state  was  brought  by  maladminis- 
tration to  the  deptlis  of  humiliation  and  to  the  brink 
of  ruin,  covdd  still  exclude  unwelcome  truth  from  the 
purlieus  of  his  own  seraglio,  and  refuse  to  see  and  hear 
whatever  might  disturb  his  luxurious  repose.  For 
these  ends,  and  for  these  ends  alone,  he  wished  to 
obtain  arbitrary  power,  if  it  could  be  obtained  without 
risk  or  trouble.  In  the  religious  disputes  which  di- 
vided his  Protestant  subjects  his  conscience  was  not  at 
all  intei-ested.  For  his  opinions  oscillated  in  a  state 
of  contented  suspense  between  hifidelity  and  Popery. 
But,  though  his  conscience  Avas  neutral  in  the  quarrel 
between  the  Episcopalians  and  the  Presbyterians,  his 
taste  was  by  no  means  so.  His  favourite  vices  were 
precisely  those  to  which  the  Puritans  were  least  in- 
dulgent. He  could  not  get  through  one  day  without 
the  help  of  diversions  which  the  Puritans  regarded  as 
sinful.  As  a  man  eminently  well  bred,  and  keenly 
sensible  of  the  ridiculous,  he  was  moved  to  contempt- 
nous  mirth  by  the  Puritan  oddities.  He  had  indeed 
some  reason  to  dislike  the  rigid  sect.  He  had,  at  the 
age  Avhen  the  passions  are  most  impetuous  and  when 
levity  is  most  pardonable,  spent  some  months  in  Scot- 


188  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  U. 

land,  a  King  in  name,  but  in  fact  a  state  prisoner  in  the 
hands  of  austere  Presbyterians.  Not  content  with  re- 
quiring him  to  conform  to  their  worship  and  to  subscribe 
their  Covenant,  they  had  watched  all  his  motions,  and 
lectured  him  on  all  his  youthful  follies.  He  had  been 
compelled  to  give  reluctant  attendance  at  endless  pray- 
ers and  sermons,  and  might  think  himself  fortunate 
when  he  was  not  insolently  reminded  from  the  pulpit 
of  his  own  frailties,  of  his  father's  tyranny,  and  of  his 
mother's  idolatry.  Indeed  he  had  been  so  miserable 
during  this  part  of  his  life  that  the  defeat  which  made 
him  again  a  wanderer  might  be  regarded  as  a  deliver- 
ance rather  tlian  as  a  calamity.  Under  the  influence 
of  such  feelings  as  these  Charles  was  desirous  to  de- 
press the  party  which  had  resisted  his  father. 

The  King's  brother,  James  Duke  of  York,  took  the 
Characters      same  side.     Though  a  libertine,  James  was 

of  the  Duke         .   .  ,    ^  ' 

of  York  and    diligent,  methodical,   and  fond    of  authority 

Earl  of  Clar-  ^  .  .  .  - 

endon.  and  busiucss.      His  understanding  was   sin- 

gularly  slow  and  narrow,  and  his  temper  obstinate, 
harsh,  and  unforgiving.  That  such  a  prince  should 
have  looked  with  no  good  will  on  the  free  institutions 
of  England,  and  on  the  party  which  was  peculiarly 
zealous  for  those  institutions,  can  excite  no  surprise. 
As  yet  the  Duke  professed  himself  a  member  of  the 
Anglican  Church :  but  he  had  already  shown  inclina- 
tions which  had  seriouslv  alarmed  good  Protestants. 

The  person  on  whom  devolved  at  this  time  the 
greatest  part  of  the  labour  of  governing  was  Edward 
Hyde,  Chancellor  of  the  realm,  who  was  soon  created 
Earl  of  Clarendon.  The  respect  which  we  justly  feel 
for  Clarendon  as  a  writer  must  not  blind  us  to  the 
faults  which  he  committed  as  a  statesman.  Some  of 
those  faults,  however,  are  explained  and  excused  b^ 


Ch.  II.l  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  189 

the  unfortunate  position  in  wliich  he  stood.  He  had, 
during  the  first  year  of  the  Long  Parhament,  been 
honorably  distinguished  among  the  senators  who  la- 
boured to  redress  the  grievances  of  the  nation.  One 
of  the  most  odious  of  those  grievances,  the  Council  of 
York,  had  been  removed  in  consequence  chiefly  of 
liis  exertions.  When  the  great  schism  took  place, 
when  the  reforming  party  and  the  conservative  party 
tirst  appeared  marshalled  against  each  other,  he  Avith 
many  wise  and  good  men  took  the  conservative  side. 
He  thenceforward  followed  the  fortunes  of  the  court, 
enjoyed  as  large  a  share  of  the  confidence  of  Charles 
the  First  as  the  reserved  nature  and  tortuous  policy 
of  that  prince  alloAved  to  any  minister,  and  subsequently 
shared  the  exile  and  directed  the  political  conduct  of 
Charles  the  Second.  At  the  Restoration  Hyde  became 
chief  minister.  In  a  few  months  it  Avas  announced 
that  he  was  closely  related  by  affinity  to  the  royal 
house.  His  daughter  had  become,  by  a  secret  mar- 
riage, Duchess  of  York.  His  grandchildren  might 
perhaps  wear  the  crown.  He  was  raised  by  this  illus- 
trious connection  over  the  heads  of  the  old  nobility 
of  the  land,  and  was  for  a  time  supposed  to  be  all 
powerful.  In  some  respects  he  was  well  fitted  for  his 
great  place.  No  man  wrote  abler  state  papers.  No 
man  spoke  with  more  weight  and  dignity  in  Council 
and  in  Parliament.  No  man  was  better  acquainted 
with  general  maxims  of  statecraft.  No  man  observed 
the  varieties  of  character  with  a  more  discriminating 
eye.  It  must  be  added  that  he  had  a  strong  sense 
of  moral  and  relimous  obli<ration,  a  sincere  reverence 
for  the  laws  of  his  country,  and  a  conscientious  regard 
lor  the  honor  and  interest  of  the  crown.  But  his 
temper  was  sour,  arrogant,  and  impatient  of  opposition. 


190  fflSTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  11 

Above  all,  he  had  been  long  an  exile ;  and  this  cir- 
cumstance alone  would  have  completely  disqualified 
him  for  the  supreme  direction  of  affairs.  It  is  scarcely 
possible  that  a  poHtician,  who  has  been  comjielled  by 
civil  troubles  to  go  into  banishment,  and  to  pass  many 
of  the  best  years  of  his  life  abroad,  can  be  fit,  on  the 
day  on  which  he  returns  to  his  native  land,  to  be  at 
the  head  of  the  government.  Clarendon  was  no  ex- 
ception to  this  rule.  He  had  left  England  with  a 
mind  heated  by  a  fierce  confhct  which  had  ended  in 
the  downfall  of  his  party  and  of  his  own  fortunes. 
From  1646  to  1660  he  had  lived  beyond  sea,  looking 
on  all  that  passed  at  home  from  a  great  distance,  and 
through  a  false  medium.  His  notions  of  public  affairs 
were  necessarily  derived  from  the  reports  of  plotters, 
many  of  whom  were  ruined  and  desperate  men.  Events 
naturally  seemed  to  him  auspicious,  not  in  proportion  as 
they  increased  the  prosperity  and  glory  of  the  nation, 
but  in  proportion  as  they  tended  to  hasten  the  hour  of 
his  own  return.  His  wish,  a  wish  which  he  has  not 
disguised,  was  that,  till  his  countrymen  brought  1  ack 
the  old  line,  they  might  never  enjoy  quiet  or  freedom. 
At  length  he  returned  ;  and,  without  having  a  single 
week  to  look  about  him,  to  mix  with  society,  to  note 
the  changes  which  fourteen  eventful  years  had  pro- 
duced in  the  national  character  and  feelings,  he  was 
at  once  set  to  rule  the  state.  In  such  circumstances, 
a  minister  of  the  greatest  tact  and  docility  would  prob- 
ably have  fallen  into  serious  errors.  But  tact  and 
docility  made  no  part  of  the  character  of  Clarendon. 
To  him  England  was  still  the  England  of  his  youth  ; 
and  he  sternly  frowned  down  every  theory  and  every 
practice  which  had  sprung  up  during  his  own  exile. 
Though  he  was  far  from  meditating  any  attack  on  the 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE  SECOND.  191 

ancient  and  undoubted  power  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, lie  saw  with  extreme  uneasiness  the  growth  of 
that  power.  The  royal  prerogative,  for  which  he  had 
long  suffered,  and  by  which  he  had  at  length  been 
raised  to  wealth  and  dignity,  was  sacred  in  his  eyes. 
The  Roundlicads  he  regarded  both  with  political  and 
with  personal  aversion.  To  the  Anglican  Church  he 
had  always  been  strongly  attached,  and  had  repeatedly, 
where  her  interests  were  concerned,  separated  himself 
with  regret  from  his  dearest  friends.  His  zeal  for 
E])iscopacy  and  for  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  was 
now  more  ardent  than  ever,  and  was  mingled  with  a 
vindictive  hatred  of  the  Puritans,  which  did  him  little 
honour  either  as  a  statesman  or  as  a  Christian. 

While  the  House  of  Commons  which  had  recalled 
the  royal  family  Avas  sitting,  it  was  impossible  to  effect 
the  reestablishment  of  the  old  ecclesiastical  system. 
Not  only  were  the  intentions  of,  the  court  strictly  con- 
cealed, but  assurances  which  quieted  the  minds  of  the 
moderate  Presbyterians  were  ffiven  by  the  Kinjx  in  the 
most  solemn  maimer.  He  had  promised,  before  his 
restoration,  that  he  would  gi\ant  liberty  of  conscience 
to  his  subjects.  He  now  repeated  that  promise,  and 
added  a  promise  to  use  his  best  endeavours  for  the 
pui'pose  of  effecting  a  compromise  between  the  con- 
tending sects.  He  wished,  he  said,  to  see  the  spiritual 
jurisdiction  divided  between  bishops  and  synods.  The 
Liturgy  should  be  revised  by  a  body  of  learned  divines, 
one  half  of  whom  should  be  Presbyterians.  The  ques- 
tions respecting  the  suri)lice,  the  posture  at  the  Eu- 
charist, and  the  sign  of  the  cross  in  bajjtism,  should  be 
settled  in  a  Avay  which  would  set  tender  consciences 
at  ease.  When  the  King  had  thus  laid  asleep  the 
vigilance  of  those  whom  he  most  feared,  he  dissolved 


192  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  iCh.  II. 

the  Parliament.     He  had  ah'eady  given  his  assent  tc 
an  act   by  which  an   amnesty  was   granted,  with  few 
exceptions,  to  all   who,  during  the  late  troubles,  had 
been  guilty  of  political  offences.     He  had  also  obtained 
from  the  Commons  a  grant  for  life  of  taxes,  the  annual 
produce  of   which   was  estimated  at  twelve  hundred 
thousand  pounds.     The  actual  income,  indeed,  during 
some  years,  amounted  to  little   more  than   a  million  : 
but  this  sum,  together  with  the  hereditaiy  revenue  of 
the  crown,  was  then  sufficient  to  defray  tlie  ex])enses 
of   the  government  in  time  of   peace.      Nothing  was 
allowed  for  a  standing  army.     The  nation  was  sick  of 
the  very  name  ;  and  the  least  mention  of  such  a  force 
would  have  incensed  and  alarmed  all  parties. 

Early  in  1(361  took  place  a  general  election.     The 
General  eiec-  pooplc    wcrc    mad    with    loyal    enthusiasm. 
tionofi66i.    rpj^g  capital  Avas  excited  by  preparations  for 
the  most  splendid  corojiation  that  had  ever  been  knoAvn. 
The  result  was  that  a  body  of  representatives  was  re- 
turned, such  as  England  had  never  yet  seen.     A  large 
proportion  of  the  successful  candidates  were  men  who 
had  fouo-ht  for  the  crown  and  the  Church,  and  whose 
minds  had  been  exasperated  by  many  injuries  and  in- 
sults suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  Roimdheads.     When 
the  members  met,  the  passions  which  animated  each 
individually   acquired    new    strength    from    sympathy. 
The    House    of    Commons   was,    during    some    years, 
more  zealous  for  royalty  than  the  King,  more  zealous 
for  episcopacy  than  the  Bishops.     Charles  and  Claren- 
don were  almost  terrified  at  the  completeness  of  their 
own   success.     They   found  themselves  in  a  situation 
not  unlike  that  in  which  Lewis  the  Eighteenth  and  the 
Duke  of  Richelieu  were  placed  while  the  Chamber  of 
1815  was  sitting.     Even  if  the  King  had  been  desirous 


Cn   II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  193 

tf)  ftilfil  the  promises  which  he  had  made  to  the  Pres- 
byterians, it  woukl  liave  been  out  of  his  power  to  do 
so.  It  was  indeed  only  by  the  strong  exertion  of  his 
influence  that  he  could  prevent  the  victorious  Cava- 
liers from  rescinding  the  act  of  indemnity,  and  retali- 
atinor  without  mercy  all  that  they  had  suffered. 

Tlie  Commons  began  by  resolving  that  every  member 
should,  on  pain  of  expulsion,  take  the  sacra-  violence  of 
ment  according  to  the  form  prescribed  by  the  in^the  m*^" 
old  Liturgy,  and  that  the  Covenant  should  I'^'-i''^'"*'^* 
be  burned  by  the  hangman  in  Palace  Yard.  An  act 
was  passed,  which  not  only  acknowledged  the  power 
of  the  sword  to  be  solely  in  the  King,  but  declared 
that  in  no  extremity  whatever  could  the  two  Houses 
be  justified  in  withstanding  him  by  force.  Another 
act  was  passed  which  required  every  officer  of  a  corpo- 
ration to  receive  the  Eucharist  accordino-  to  the  rites 
of  the  Churcli  of  England,  and  to  swear  that  he  licld 
resistance  to  the  King's  authority  to  be  in  all  cases  un- 
lawful. A  few  hotheaded  men  wished  to  bring  in  a 
bill,  which  should  at  once  annul  all  the  statutes  passed 
by  the  Long  Parliament,  and  should  restore  the  Star 
Chamber  and  the  High  Commission  ;  but  the  reaction, 
violent  as  it  Avas^  did  not  proceed  quite  to  this  lengtii. 
It  still  continued  to  be  the  law  that  a  Parliament  should 
be  held  every  three  years  :  but  the  stringent  clauses 
which  dii-ected  the  returning  officers  to  proceed  to  elec- 
tion at  the  proper  time,  even  without  the  royal  writ, 
were  repealed.  The  Bishops  were  restored  to  their 
seats  in  the  Upj^er  House.  The  old  ecclesiastical  polity 
and  the  old  Iviturgy  were  revived  without  any  nK)difi- 
cation  which  had  any  tendency  to  conciliate  even  the 
most  reasojiable  Presbyterians.  Episcopal  ordination 
was  now,  for  the  first  time,  made  an  indispensable  qual- 

voi..  I.  13 


194  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  II. 

ification  for  churcli  preferment.  About  two  thousand 
ministers  of  religion,  whose  conscience  did  not  suffer 
tliem  to  conform,  were  driven  from  tlieir  benefices  in 
one  day.  The  dominant  party  exultingly  reminded 
the  sufferers  that  the  Long  Parhament,  when  at  tlie 
height  of  power,  had  turned  out  a  still  greater  num- 
ber of  Royalist  divines.  The  reproach  was  but  too 
well  founded  :  but  the  Lono;  Parliament  had  at  least 
allowed  to  the  divines  whom  it  ejected  a  provision 
sufficient  to  keep  them  fi'om  starving ;  and  this  ex- 
ample the  Cavaliers,  intoxicated  with  animosity,  had 
not  the  justice  and  humanity  to  follow. 

Then   came  penal  statutes  against  Nonconformists, 
Persecution    statutes  for  whicli  precedents  might  too  easi- 

of  the  _  ^         ,  ,      ", 

Puritans.  ]y  \)q  fouiul  iu  the  Puritan  legislation,  but  to 
which  the  King  could  not  give  his  assent  without  a 
breach  of  promises  publicly  made,  in  the  most  impor- 
tant crisis  of  his  life,  to  those  on  whom  his  fate  de- 
pended. The  Presbyterians,  in  extreme  distress  and 
terror,  fled  to  the  foot  of  the  throne,  and  pleaded  their 
recent  services  and  the  royal  faith  solemnly  and  repeat- 
edly plighted.  The  King  wavered.  He  could  not  deny 
his  own  hand  and  seal.  He  could  not  but  be  conscious 
that  he  owed  much  to  the  petitioners.  He  was  little 
in  the  habit  of  resisting  importunate  solicitation.  His 
temper  was  not  that  of  a  persecutor.  He  disliked  the 
Puritans  indeed  ;  but  in  him  dislike  was  a  languid 
feelincr,  very  little  resemblino;  the  enerfjetic  hatred 
which  had  burned  in  the  heart  of  Laud.  He  was, 
moreover,  partial  to  the  Roman  Catholic  religion  ;  and 
he  knew  that  it  would  be  impossibly  to  grant  liberty 
of  v^orship  to  the  ])rofessors  of  that  religion  without 
extendincp  the  same  indulcrence  to  Protestant  dissenters. 
He  therefore  made  a  feeble  attempt  to  restrain  the 
intolerant  zeal  of  the  House  of  Commons  ;  but  that 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  195 

House  was  under  the  influence  of  far  deeper  convic- 
tions, and  far  stronger  passions  than  liis  own.  After  a 
faijit  struggle  he  yielded,  and  passed,  with  the  show  of 
alacrity,  a  series  of  odious  acts  against  the  separatists. 
It  was  made  a  crime  to  attend  a  dissenting  place  of 
worship.  A  single  justice  of  the  peace  might  convict 
without  a  jury,  and  might,  for  the  third  offence,  pass 
sentence  for  transportation  beyond  sea  for  seven  years. 
With  refined  cruelty  it  was  provided  that  the  offender 
should  not  be  transported  to  New  England,  where  he 
was  likely  to  find  sympathizing  friends.  If  he  returned 
to  his  own  country  before  the  expiration  of  his  term  of 
exile,  he  was  liable  to  capital  punishment.  A  new  and 
most  unreasonable  test  was  imposed  on  divines  who  had 
been  deprived  of  their  benefices  for  nonconformity  ;  and 
all  wlio  refused  to  take  that  test  were  prohibited  from 
coming  within  five  miles  of  any  town  which  was  gov- 
erned by  a  corporation,  of  any  town  which  was  repre- 
sented in  Parliament,  or  of  any  town  where  they  had 
themselves  resided  as  ministers.  The  magistrates,  by 
wiiom  these  rigorous  statutes  were  to  be  enforced,  were 
in  general  men  inflamed  by  party  spirit  and  b}^  the  re- 
membrance of  wrongs  suflered  in  the  time  of  the  Com- 
monweahh.  The  gaols  were  therefore  soon  crowded 
with  dissenters  ;  and,  among  the  sufferers,  were  some 
of  whose  genius  and  virtue  any  Christian  society  might 
well  be  proud. 

The  Church  of  England  was  not  uncrrateflil  for  the 
protection  which  she  received  from  the  gov-  z,..,,  ^f  0,^ 
ernment.     From  the  first  day  of  her  exist-  her^dHary 
ence,   she   had   been  attaciied   to  monarchy,   "'""'^''chy. 
But,  during  the  quarter  of  a  century  wliicli  followed 
the  Restoration,  her  zeal  iur  royal  authority  and  he- 
reditary  right   passed    all   bounds.     She  had  suftered 


198  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

with  the  House  of  Stuart.  She  had  been  restored  with 
that  House,  She  was  connected  with  it  by  common 
interests,  fi'iendships,  and  enmities.  It  seemed  im- 
possible that  a  day  could  ever  come  when  the  ties 
which  bound  her  to  the  children  of  her  august  martyr 
would  be  sundered,  and  when  the  loyalty  in  which 
she  gloried  would  cease  to  be  a  pleasing  and  pi'ofitable 
duty.  She  accordingly  magnified  in  fulsome  phrase 
that  prerogative  which  Avas  constantly  employed  to 
defend  and  to  aggrandise  her,  and  reprobated,  much 
at  her  ease,  the  depravity  of  those  whom  oppression, 
from  which  she  was  exempt,  had  goaded  to  rebellion. 
Her  favourite  theme  was  the  doctrine  of  nonresistance. 
That  doctrine  she  taught  without  any  qualification,  and 
followed  out  to  all  its  extreme  consequences.  Her  dis- 
ciples were  never  weary  of  repeating  that  in  no  con- 
ceivable case,  not  even  if  England  were  cursed  with  a 
King  resembling  Busiris  or  Phalaris,  who,  in  defiance 
of  law,  and  without  the  pretence  of  justice,  should  daily 
doom  hundreds  of  innocent  victims  to  torture  and  death, 
would  all  the  Estates  of  the  realm  united  be  justified 
in  withstanding  his  tyranny  by  physical  force.  Hap- 
pily the  principles  of  human  nature  afford  abundant 
security  that  such  theories  will  never  be  more  than 
theories.  The  day  of  trial  came  :  and  the  very  men 
who  had  most  loudly  and  most  sincerely  professed  this 
extravagant  loyalty  were,  in  every  county  of  England, 
arrayed  in  arms  against  the  throne. 

Property  all  over  the  kingdom  was  now  again  chaiig- 
ino-  hands.  The  national  sales,  not  havina;  been  con- 
firmed  by  Act  of  Parliament,  were  regarded  by  the 
tribunals  as  nullities.  The  bishops,  the  deans,  the 
ehajiters,  the  Royalist  nobility  and  gentry,  reentered  on 
their  confiscated  estates,  and  ejected  even  purchasers  who 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  197 

had  given  fair  prices.  The  losses  which  the  Cavaliers 
had  sustained  dnring  the  ascendency  of  their  op})onents 
were  thus  in  part  repaired  ;  but  in  part  only.  All  actions 
for  mesne  profits  were  effectually  barred  by  the  general 
amnesty  ;  and  the  numerovis  Royalists  who,  in  order  to 
discharge  fines  imposed  by  the  Parliament,  or  in  oi-der  to 
purchase  the  favour  of  powerful  Roundheads,  had  sold 
lands  for  much  less  than  the  real  value,  were  not  re- 
lieved from  the  legal  consequences  of  their  own  acts. 

While  these  changes  were  in  progress,  a  change  still 
more  important  took  place  in  the  morals  and  change  in 
manners  of  the  community.  Those  passions  of'^thTcom- 
and  tastes  which,  under  the  rule  of  the  Puri-  ™"°''y- 
tans,  had  been  sternly  repressed,  and,  if  gratified  at 
all,  had  been  gratified  by  stealth,  broke  forth  with 
ungovernable  violence  as  soon  as  the  check  was  with- 
drawn. Men  flew  to  frivolous  amusements  and  to 
criminal  jileasares  with  the  greediness  which  long  and 
enforced  abstinence  naturally  produces.  Little  re- 
straint was  imposed  by  public  opinion.  For  the  nation, 
nauseated  with  cant,  suspicious  of  all  pretensions  to 
sanctity,  and  still  smarting  from  the  recent  tyranny 
of  rulers  austere  in  life  and  powerful  in  prayer,  looked 
for  a  time  with  complacency  on  the  softer  and  gayer 
vices.  Still  less  restraint  was  imposed  by  the  govern- 
ment. Indeed  there  was  no  excess  which  was  not 
encouraged  by  the  ostentatious  profligacy  of  the  king 
and  of  his  favourite  courtiers.  A  few  coinisellors  of 
Charles  the  First,  who  were  now  no  longer  young, 
retained  the  decorous  gravity  which  had  been  thirty 
years  before  in  flishion  at  Whitehall.  Such  were  Clar- 
endon himself,  and  his  friends,  Thomas  Wriothesley, 
Earl  of  Southam])ton,  Lord  Treasurer,  and  James  But- 
ler, Duke  of  Ormond,  who,  having  through  many  vicis- 


198  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

situdes  struggled  gallantly  for  the  royal  cause  in  Ire- 
land, now  governed  tliat  kingdom  as  Lord  Lieutenant. 
But  neither  the  memory  of  the  services  of  these  men, 
nor  their  great  power  in  the  state,  could  protect  them 
from  the  sarcasms  which  modish  vice  loves  to  dart  at 
obsolete  virtue.  The  praise  of  politeness  and  vivacity 
could  now  scarcely  be  obtained  except  by  some  vio- 
lation of  decorum.  Talents  great  and  various  assisted 
to  spread  the  contagion.  Ethical  philosophy  had  re- 
cently taken  a  form  well  suited  to  please  a  generation 
equally  devoted  to  monarchy  and  to  vice.  Thomas 
Hobbes  had,  in  langiiage  more  precise  and  luminous 
than  has  ever  been  em])loyed  by  any  other  metaphys- 
ical writer,  maintained  that  the  will  of  the  prince  was 
the  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  and  that  every  sub- 
ject ought  to  be  ready  to  profess  Popery,  Mahome- 
tanism,  or  Paganism  at  the  royal  command.  Thou- 
sands who  were  incompetent  to  appreciate  what  was 
really  valuable  in  his  speculations,  eagerly  welcomed 
a  theory  whicli,  while  it  exalted  the  kingly  office,  re- 
laxed the  obligations  of  morality,  and  degraded  relig- 
ion into  a  mei'e  affiiir  of  state.  Hobbism  soon  became 
an  almost  essential  part  of  the  character  of  the  fine 
gentleman.  All  the  lighter  kinds  of  literature  were 
deeply  tainted  by  the  prevailing  licentiousness.  Poetry 
stooped  to  be  the  pandar  of  every  low  desire.  Ridi- 
cule, instead  of  putting  guilt  and  error  to  the  blush, 
turned  her  formidable  shafts  against  innocence  and  truth. 
The  restored  Church  contended  indeed  against  the  pre- 
vailing immorality,  but  contended  feebly,  and  with 
half  a  heart.  It  was  necessary  to  the  decorum  of  her 
character  that  she  should  admonish  her  erring  chil- 
dren. But  her  admonitions  were  given  in  a  somewhat 
perfunctory   manner.      Her  attention   was   elsewhere 


Cn.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  199 

engaged.  Her  whole  soul  was  in  tlie  work  of  crushing 
the  Puritans,  and  of  teaching  her  disciples  to  give  unto 
C;esar  the  things  which  were  Ca3sar's.  She  had  been 
pillaged  and  oppressed  by  the  party  which  preached  an 
austere  morality.  She  had  been  restored  to  opulence 
and  honour  by  libertines.  Little  as  the  men  of  mirth 
and  fashion  were  disposed  to  shape  their  lives  according 
to  her  ))rece])ts,  they  were  yet  ready  to  fight  knee  deep 
in  blood  for  her  cathedrals  and  palaces,  for  every  line 
of  her  rubric  and  every  thread  of  her  vestments.  If 
the  debauched  Cavalier  haunted  brothels  and  irambling: 
houses,  he  at  least  avoided  conventicles.  If  he  never 
spoke  without  uttering  ribaldry  and  blasphemy,  he  made 
some  amends  by  his  eagerness  to  send  Baxter  and  Howe 
to  gaol  for  preaching  and  praying.  Thus  the  clergy, 
for  a  time,  made  war  on  schism  with  so  much  vigour 
that  they  had  little  leisure  to  make  war  on  vice.  The 
ribaldry  of  Etherege  and  Wycherley  was,  in  the  pres- 
ence and  under  the  special  sanction  of  the  head  of  the 
Church,  ])ublicly  recited  by  female  lips  in  female  ears, 
while  the  author  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  languished 
in  a  dungeon  for  the  crime  of  proclaiming  the  gospel  to 
the  poor.  It  is  an  uncpiestionable  and  a  most  instruc- 
tive fact  that  the  years  during  which  the  political  power 
of  the  Anglican  hierarchy  was  in  the  zenith  were  pre- 
cisely the  years  during  which  national  virtue  was  at  the 
lowest  point. 

Scarcely  any  rank  or  profession  escaped  the  infection 
of  the  ])revailing  immorality  ;  but  those  per-  Profligacy  of 
sons  who  made  politics  their  business  were  p°'"""''»*- 
perhaps  the  most  corrupt  ])art  of  the  con-upt  society. 
For  they  were  exposed  not  only  to  the  same  noxious 
influences  which  afl'ected  the  nation  generally,  but  also 
to  a  taint  of  a  ju'culiar  and  of  a  most  malignant  kind. 


200  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

Their  character  liad  been  formed  amidst  fi-equent  and 
violent   revolutions    and    comiterrevolutions.      In    the 
course  of  a  few  years  they  had  seen  the  ecclesiastical 
and  civil  jiolity  of  their  country  repeatedly  changed. 
They  had  seen  an  Episcopal  Church  persecuting  Puri- 
tans, a  Puritan  Church  persecuting  Episcopalians,  and  an 
E])iscoj)al  Church  persecuting  Puritans  again.  They  had 
seen  hereditary  monarchy  abolished  and  restored.    They 
had  seen  the  Long  Parliament  thrice  supreme  in  the 
state  and  thrice  dissolved  amidst  the  curses  and  lauphter 
of  millions.     They  had  seen  a  new  dynasty  rapidly  ris- 
ing to  the  height  of  power  and  glory,  and  then  on  a 
sudden  luirled  down  from  the  chair  of  state  without  a 
struggle.     They  had  seen  a  new  representative  system 
devised,  tried,  and  abandoned.     They  had  seen  a  new 
House  of  Lords  created  and  scattei-ed.     They  had  seen 
great   masses   of  property  violently   transferred   from 
Cavaliers  to  Roundheads,  and  from  Roundheads  back 
to  Cavaliers.     During  these  events  no  man  could  be  a 
stirring  and  thriving  politician  who  was  not  prepared 
to  change  Avith  every  change  of  fortune.     It  was  only 
in    retirement    that    any  person    could    long   keep  the 
character  either  of  a   steady  Royalist  or  of  a  steady 
Republican.     One  who,  in  such  an  age,  is  determined 
to  attain  civil  greatness  must  renounce  all  thought  of 
consistency.     Instead  of  affecting  immutability  in  the 
midst  of  endless  mutation,  he  must  be  always  on  the 
watch  for  the   indications  of  a  comino;  reaction.     He 
must  seize  tlie    exact   moment   for  deserting  a  fallinsr 
cause.     Having  gone  all  lengths  with  a  faction  while 
it  was  uppermost,  he  must  suddenly  extricate  himself 
from  it  when  its  difficulties  begin,  must  assail  it,  must 
persecute  it,  must  enter  on  a  new  career  of  power  and 
prosperity  in  company  with  new  associates.     His  situa- 


Ch.  11]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  201 

tion  naturally  devclopes  in  hini  to  the  highest  degree  a 
pecuhar  class  of  abilities  and  a  peculiar  class  of  vices. 
He  becomes  quick  of  observation  and  fertile  of  resource. 
He  catches  without  effort  the  tone  of  any  sect  or  party 
with  which  he  chances  to  mingle.  He  discerns  the 
signs  of  the  times  with  a  sagacity  which  to  ihe  mul- 
titude appears  miraculous,  with  a  sagacity  resembling 
that  with  which  a  veteran  police  officer  pursues  the 
faintest  indications  of  crime,  or  with  which  a  Mohawk 
warrior  follows  a  track  through  the  woods.  But  we 
shall  seldom  find  in  a  statesman  so  trained,  integrit}.-, 
constancy,  any  of  tiie  virtues  of  the  noble  family  of 
Truth.  He  has  no  faith  in  any  doctrine,  no  zeal  for 
any  cause.  He  has  seen  so  many  old  institutions  swept 
away,  that  he  has  no  reverence  for  prescription.  He 
has  seen  so  many  new  institutions  from  which  much 
had  been  expected  produce  mere  disappointment,  that  he 
has  no  hope  of  improvement.  He  sneers  alike  at  those 
who  are  anxious  to  preserve  and  at  those  who  are 
eatrer  to  reform.  There  is  nothing  in  the  state  which 
he  could  not,  without  a  scrujjle  or  a  blush,  join  in  de- 
fending or  in  destroying.  Fidelity  to  opinions  and  to 
friends  seems  to  him  mere  dulness  and  wrongheaded- 
nevSs.  Politics  he  regards,  not  as  a  science  of  which  the 
object  is  the  l)a[)j)iness  of  mankind,  but  as  an  exciting 
game  of  mixed  chance  and  skill,  at  which  a  dexterous 
and  lucky  player  may  win  an  estate,  a  coronet,  perhaps 
a  crown,  and  at  which  one  rash  move  may  lead  to  the 
loss  of  fortune  and  of  life.  Ambition,  which,  in  good 
times,  and  in  good  minds,  is  half  a  virtue,  now,  dis- 
joined from  every  elevated  and  philanthropic  sentiment, 
becomes  a  selfish  cui)idity  scarcely  less  ignoble  than  ava- 
rice. Among  those  politicians  who,  from  the  Restora- 
tion to  the  accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover,  wei*e  at 


202  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

the  head  of  the  great  parties  in  the  state,  very  few  can 
be  named  whose  reputation  is  not  stained  by  what,  in 
our  age,  would  be  called  gross  perfidy  and  corruption. 
It  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  most  un- 
principled public  men  who  have  taken  part  in  affairs 
within  our  memory  would,  if  tried  by  the  standard 
which  was  in  fashion  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  deserve  to  be  regarded  as  scrupulous 
and  disinterested. 

While  these  political,  religious,  and  moral  changes 
state  of  were  taking  place  in  England,  the  royal  au- 
scotiand.  thority  had  been  without  difficulty  reestab- 
lished in  every  other  part  of  the  British  islands.  In 
Scotland  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts  had  been  hailed 
with  deliorht  :  for  it  was  regarded  as  the  restoration  of 
national  independence.  And  true  it  was  that  the  yoke 
which  Cromwell  had  imposed  was,  in  appearance,  taken 
away,  that  the  Scottish  Estates  again  met  in  their  old 
hall  at  Edinburgh,  and  that  tlie  Senators  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Justice  again  administered  the  Scottish  law 
according  to  the  old  forms.  Yet  was  the  independence 
of  the  little  kingdom  necessarily  rather  nominal  than 
real :  for,  as  long  as  the  King  had  England  on  his  side, 
he  had  nothing  to  apprehend  from  disaffection  in  his 
other  dominions.  He  was  now  in  such  a  situation  that 
he  could  renew  the  attempt  which  had  proved  destruc- 
tive to  his  father  without  any  danger  of  his  father's  fate. 
Charles  the  First  had  tried  to  force  his  own  religion  by 
his  regal  power  on  the  Scots  at  a  moment  when  both 
his  religion  and  his  regal  power  were  unpopular  in  Eng- 
land ;  and  he  had  not  only  failed,  but  had  raised  troubles 
which  had  ultimately  cost  him  his  crown  and  his  head. 
Times  had  now  changed  :  Enoland  was  zealous  for  mon- 
archy  and  prelacy  ;  and  therefore  the  scheme  which  had 


Cii.  II. J  UNDER    CHARLES    THE    SECOND.  208 

formerly  been  in  the  higiiest  degree  Imprudent  might  be 
resumed  with  Httle  risk  to  the  throne.  The  government 
resolved  to  set  up  a  prelatical  church  in  Scotland.  The 
design  was  disapproved  by  every  Scotchman  whose  judg- 
ment was  entitled  to  respect.  Some  Scottish  statesmen 
who  Avere  zealous  fur  the  king's  prerogative  had  been 
bred  Presbyterians.  Though  little  troubled  with  scru- 
ples, they  retained  a  preference  for  the  religion  of  their 
childhood  ;  and  they  well  knew  how  strong  a  hold  that 
religion  had  on  the  hearts  of  their  countrymen.  They 
remonstrated  strongly:  but,  when  they  found  that  they 
remonstrated  in  vain,  they  had  not  virtue  enough  to  per- 
sist in  an  opposition  which  would  have  given  offence  to 
their  master  ;  and  several  of  them  stooped  to  the  wick- 
edness and  baseness  of  persecuting  what  in  their  con- 
sciences they  believed  to  be  the  purest  form  of  Christi- 
anity. The  Scottish  Parliament  was  so  constituted  that 
it  had  scarcely  ever  offered  an^  serious  opposition  even 
to  Kings  much  weaker  than  Charles  then  was.  Episco- 
pacy, therefore,  was  established  by  law.  As  to  the  form 
of  worshij),  a  large  discretion  was  left  to  the  clerg}''.  In 
some  churches  the  English  Lituro-v  was  used.  In  othei's, 
the  ministers  selected  fi'om  that  Liturgy  such  prayers 
and  thanksgivings  as  were  likely  to  be  least  ofiensive  to 
the  ])eople.  But  in  general  the  doxology  was  sung  at 
the  close  of  public  worship,  and  the  Apostles'  Creed  was 
recited  when  baptism  was  administered.  By  the  great 
body  of  the  Scottish  nation  the  new  Church  was  detested 
both  as  superstitious  and  as  foreign  ;  as  tainted  with  the 
corruptions  of  Rome,  and  as  a  mark  of  the  predominance 
of  England.  There  was,  however,  no  general  insur- 
rection. The  country  was  not  what  it  had  been  twenty- 
two  years  before.  Disastrous  war  and  alien  domination 
had  tamed  the  spirit  of  the  people.     The  aristocracy, 


204  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

which  was  held  in  great  honour  hy  the  niicklle  class  and 
bj  the  pojjulace,  had  put  itself  at  the  head  of  the  move- 
ment against  Charles  the  First,  but  proved  obsequious 
to  Charles  the  Second.  From  the  English  Puritans  no 
aid  was  now  to  be  expected.  They  were  a  feeble  party, 
])roscnbed  both  by  law  and  by  public  opinion.  The 
bulk  of  the  Scottish  nation,  therefore,  sullenly  submitted, 
and,  with  many  misgivings  of  conscience,  attended  the 
ministrations  of  the  Episcopal  clergy,  or  of  Presbyterian 
divines  who  had  consented  to  accept  from  the  govern- 
ment a  half  toleration,  known  by  the  name  of  the  In- 
dulgence. But  there  were,  particularly  in  the  western 
lowlands,  many  fierce  and  resolute  men,  who  held  that 
the  obligation  to  observe  the  Covenant  was  paramount 
to  the  obligation  to  obey  the  magistrate.  These  people, 
in  defiance  of  the  law,  persisted  in  meeting  to  worship 
God  after  their  own  fashion.  The  Indulgence  they 
regarded,  not  as  a  partial  reparation  of  the  wrongs 
infiicted  by  the  State  on  the  Church,  but  as  a  new 
wrong,  the  more  odious  because  it  was  disguised  under 
the  appearance  of  a  benefit.  Persecution,  they  said, 
could  only  kill  the  body  ;  but  the  black  Indulgence  was 
deadly  to  the  soul.  Driven  from  the  towns,  they  as- 
sembled on  heaths  and  mountains.  Attacked  by  the 
civil  power,  they  without  scruple  repelled  force  by  force. 
At  every  conventicle  they  mustered  in  arms.  They 
repeatedly  broke  out  into  open  rebellion.  They  were 
easily  defeated,  and  mercilessly  punished  :  but  neither 
defeat  nor  punishment  could  subdue  their  spirit.  Hunted 
down  like  Avild  beasts,  tortured  till  their  bones  were 
beaten  flat,  imprisoned  by  hundreds,  hanged  by  scores, 
exposed  at  one  time  to  the  license  of  soldiers  from  Eng- 
land, abandoned  at  another  time  to  the  mercy  of  troops 
of  marauders  from  the   Highlands,  they  still  stood  at 


Ch.  IL]  under   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  205 

bav  in  a  mood  so  savage  that  the  boldest  and  miohtiest 
oppressor  could  not  but  dread  the  audacity  of  then*  de- 
spair. 

Such  was,  during  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second, 
the  state  of  Scotland.  Ireland  was  not  less  gty^te  of  ire- 
distracted.  In  that  island  existed  feuds,  com-  ''*°''- 
pared  with  which  the  hottest  animosities  of  English  poli- 
ticians were  lukewarm.  The  enmity  between  the  Irish 
Cavaliers  and  the  Irish  Roundheads  was  almost  for- 
gotten in  the  fiercer  enmity  which  raged  between  the 
English  and  the  Celtic  races.  The  interval  between 
the  Episcopalian  and  the  Presbyterian  seemed  to  van- 
ish, when  compared  with  the  interval  which  separated 
both  from  the  Papist.  During  the  late  civil  troubles 
the  greater  pai't  of  the  Irish  soil  had  been  transferred 
from  the  vanquished  nation  to  the  victors.  To  the 
favour  of  the  crown  few  either  of  the  old  or  of  the 
new  occupants  had  any  pretensions.  The  despoilers 
and  the  despoiled  had,  for  the  most  part,  been  rebels 
alike.  The  government  was  soon  perplexed  and  weax*ied 
b}^  the  conflicting  claims  and  mutual  accusations  of  the 
two  incensed  factions.  Those  colonists  amon<i  whom 
Cromwell  had  portioned  out  the  conquered  territory, 
and  whose  descendants  are  still  called  Cromwellians, 
represented  that  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  were  deadly 
enemies  of  the  English  nation  under  every  dynasty,  and 
of  the  Protestant  religion  in  every  form.  They  described 
and  exagrrerated  the  atrocities  which  had  disgraced  the 
insurrection  of  Ulster :  they  urged  the  King  to  follow 
up  with  resolution  the  ])()licy  of  the  Pi-otector  ;  and  they 
were  not  ashamed  to  hint  tiiat  there  would  never  be 
peace  in  Ireland  till  the  old  Irish  race  should  be  extir- 
pated. The  Roman  Catholics  extenuated  their  oflfence 
as  they  best  might,  and  expatiated  in  piteous  languaiie 


206  HISTORY    OP  ENGLAND,  [Cii.  II. 

Oil  the  severity  of  their  punishment,  which,  in  trutli, 
had  not  been  lenient.  They  implored  Charles  not  to 
confound  the  iriuocent  with  the  guilty,  and  reminded 
liim  that  many  of  the  guilty  had  atoned  for  their  fault 
by  returning  to  their  allegiance,  and  by  defending  his 
rights  against  the  murderers  of  his  father.  The  court, 
sick  of  the  importunities  of  two  parties,  neither  of  which 
it  had  any  reason  to  love,  at  length  relieved  itself  from 
trouble  by  dictating  a  compromise.  That  system  cruel, 
but  most  complete  and  energetic,  by  which  Oliver 
had  proposed  to  make  the  island  thoroughly  English, 
was  abandoned.  The  Cromwellians  were  induced  to 
relinquish  a  third  part  of  their  acquisitions.  The  land 
thus  surrendered  was  capriciously  divided  among  claim- 
ants whom  the  government  chose  to  favour.  But  great 
numbers  who  protested  that  they  were  innocent  of  all 
disloyalty,  and  some  persons  who  boasted  that  their 
loyalty  had  been  signally  displayed,  obtained  neither 
restitution  nor  compensation,  and  filled  France  and 
Spain  with  outcries  against  the  injustice  and  ingratitude 
of  the  House  of  Stuart. 

Meantime  the  government  had,  even  in   England, 
ceased  to  be  popular.     The  Royalists  had  be- 

The  govern-  i        •  i       i  i        •  t  i 

merit  be-  guu  to  quarrcl  With  the  court  and  with  each 
popular  in  Other;  and  the  party  which  had  been  van- 
quished, trampled  down,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
annihilated,  but  which  had  still  retained  a  strong  prin- 
ciple of  life,  again  raised  its  head,  and  renewed  the  in- 
terminable war. 

Had  the  administration  been  faultless,  the  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  return  of  the  King  and  the  termination 
of  the  military  tyranny  had  been  hailed  could  not  have 
been  permanent.  For  it  is  the  law  of  our  nature  that 
such  fits  of  excitement  shall  always  be  followed  by  re- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  207 

missions.  The  manner  in  which  the  court  abused  its 
victory  made  the  remission  speedy  and  complete.  Every 
moderate  man  was  shocked  by  the  insolence,  cruelty  and 
perfidy  with  which  the  Nonconformists  were  treated. 
The  penal  laws  had  effectually  purged  the  oppressed 
party  of  those  insincere  members  whose  vices  had  dis- 
graced it,  and  had  made  it  again  an  honest  and  pious 
body  of  men.  The  Puritan,  a  conqueror,  a  ruler,  a 
persecutor,  a  sequestrator,  had  been  detested.  The 
Puritan,  betrayed  and  evil  intreated,  deserted  by  all  the 
timeservers  who,  in  his  prosperity,  had  claimed  brother- 
hood with  liim,  hunted  from  his  home,  forbidden  under 
severe  penalties  to  pray  or  receive  the  sacrament  ac- 
cording to  his  conscience,  yet  still  firm  in  his  resolution 
to  obey  God  rather  than  man,  was,  in  spite  of  some  un- 
pleasing  recollections,  an  object  of  pity  and  respect  to 
well  constituted  minds.  These  feelinfrs  became  stronger 
when  it  was  noised  abroad  that  the  court  was  not  dis- 
posed to  treat  Papists  Avith  the  same  rigour  which  had 
been  shown  to  Presbyterians.  A  vague  suspicion  that 
the  King  and  the  Duke  were  not  sincere  Protestants 
sprang  uj)  in  many  (juarters.  Many  persons  too  wlio 
had  been  disgusted  by  the  austerity  and  hypocrisy  of 
the  Saints  of  tiie  Commonwealth  began  to  be  still  more 
disgusted  by  the  open  profligacy  of  the  court  and  of  the 
Cavaliers,  and  were  disposed  to  doubt  whether  the  sul- 
len ])reciseness  of  Praise  God  Barebone  might  not  be 
preferable  to  the  outrageous  profaneness  and  licentious- 
ness of  the  Buckinghams  and  Sedleys.  Even  immoral 
meii,  who  were  not  utterly  destitute  of  sense  and  pub- 
lic spirit,  complainea  tliat  the  govenmient  treated  the 
most  serious  matters  as  trifles,  and  made  trifles  its  seri- 
ous business.  A  King  might  be  })ardoned  for  amusing 
his  leisure  with  wine,  wit,  and  beauty.     But  it  was  ill- 


208  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  JCh.  II. 

tolerable  that  he  should  sink  into  a  mere  lounger  and 
voluptuary,  that  the  gravest  atfau's  of  state  should  be 
neglected,  and  that  the  public  service  should  be  starved 
and  the  finances  derano-ed  in  order  that  harlots  and 
parasites  might  grow  rich. 

A  large  body  of  Royalists  joined  in  these  complaints, 
and  added  many  sharp  reflections  on  the  King's  mgrat- 
itude.  His  whole  revenue,  indeed,  would  not  have 
sufficed  to  reward  them  all  in  proportion  to  their  own 
consciousness  of  desert.  For  to  every  distressed  gen- 
tleman who  had  fought  under  Rupert  or  Derby  his 
own  services  seemed  eminently  meritorious,  and  his 
own  sufferings  eminently  severe.  Every  one  had  flat- 
tered himself  that,  whatever  became  of  the  rest,  he 
should  be  largely  recompensed  for  all  that  he  had  lost 
during  the  civil  troubles,  and  that  the  restoration  of 
the  monarchy  would  be  folloAved  by  the  restoration  of 
his  own  dilapidated  fortunes.  None  of  these  expect- 
ants could  restrain  his  indignation,  when  he  found 
that  he  was  as  poor  under  the  King  as  he  had  been 
under  the  Rump  or  the  Protector.  The  negligence 
and  extravagance  of  the  court  excited  the  bitter  indig- 
nation of  these  loyal  veterans.  They  justly  said  that 
one  half  of  what  His  Majesty  squandered  on  concu- 
bines and  buffoons  would  gladden  the  hearts  of  hun- 
dreds of  old  Cavaliers  who,  after  cutting  down  their 
.:aks  and  melting  their  plate  to  help  his  father,  now 
wandered  about  in  threadbare  suits,  and  chd  not  know 
where  to  turn  for  a  meal. 

At  the  same  time  a  sudden  fall  of  rents  took  place. 
The  income  of  every  landed  proprietor  was  diminished 
by  five  shillings  in  the  pound.  The  cry  of  agricultural 
distress  rose  from  every  shire  in  the  kingdom  ;  and 
for  that   distress   the  government  was,  as  usual,  held 


Ch.  IL]       under  CHARLES  THE  SECOND.         209 

accountable.  The  gentry,  compelled  to  retrench  their 
expenses  for  a  period,  saw  with  indignation  the  increas- 
ing splendour  and  profusion  of  Whitehall,  and  were 
immovably  fixed  in  the  belief  that  the  money  which 
ought  to  have  supported  their  households  had,  by 
some  inexplicable  process,  gone  to  the  favourites  of  the 
kino;. 

The  minds  of  men  were  now  in  such  a  temper  that 
every  public  act  excited  discontent.  Charles  liad  taken 
to  Avife  Catharine  Princess  of  Portun;al.  The  marriafTe 
was  generally  disliked  ;  and  the  murmurs  became  loud 
when  it  appeared  that  the  King  was  not  likely  to  have 
any  legitimate  posterity.  Duidiirk,  won  by  Oliver 
fi'om  Sj)ain,  was  sold  to  Lewis  the  Fourteenth,  King 
of  France.  This  bargain  excited  general  indignation. 
Englishmen  were  already  beginning  to  observe  with 
uneasiness  the  progress  of  the  French  power,  and  to 
regard  the  House  of  Bourbon  with  the  same  feeling 
with  Avhich  their  grandfathers  had  regarded  the  House 
of  Austria.  Was  it  wise,  men  asked,  at  such  a  time,  to 
make  any  addition  to  the  sti'ength  of  a  monarchy  al- 
ready too  formidable  ?  Dunkirk  was,  moreover,  prized 
by  the  people,  not  merely  as  a  place  of  arms,  and  as  a 
key  to  the  Low  Countries,  but  also  as  a  trophy  of  Eng- 
lish valour.  It  was  to  the  subjects  of  Charles  what 
Calais  had  been  to  an  earlier  generation,  and  what  the 
rock  of  Gibraltar,  so  manfully  defended,  through  tlis- 
astrous  and  perilous  years,  against  the  fleets  and  armies 
of  a  mighty  coalition,  is  to  ourselves.  The  ])lea  of 
economy  might  have  had  some  weight,  if  it  had  been 
urged  by  an  economical  government.  But  it  was  no- 
torious that  the  charges  of  Dunkirk  fell  far  short  of  the 
sums  which  were  wasted  at  court  in  vice  and  folly.  It 
seemed  insujjportable  that  a  sovereign,  profuse  beyond 

VOL.    I.  14 


210  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  It 

example  in  all  that  regarded  his  own  pleasures,  should 
be  niggardly  in  all  that  regarded  the  safety  and  honour 
of  the  state. 

The  public  discontent  was  heightened,  when  it  was 
found  that,  while  Dunkirk  was  abandoned  on  the  plea 
of  economy,  the  fortress  of  Tangier,  which  was  part  of 
the  dower  of  Queen  Catharine,  was  repaired  and  ke{)t 
up  at  an  enormous  charge.  That  jjlace  was  associated 
with  no  recollections  gratifying  to  the  national  pride  : 
it  could  in  no  way  promote  the  national  interests  :  it 
involved  us  in  inglorious,  unprofitable,  and  intermi- 
nable wars  with  tribes  of  half  savao;e  Mussvilmans  ;  and 
it  was  situated  in  a  climate  singularly  unfavourable  to 
the  health  and  vicjour  of  the  Enolish  race. 

But  the  murmurs  excited  by  these  eri'ors  were  faint, 
War  with  the  wlicu  Compared  with  the  clamours  which  soon 
Dutch.  broke  forth.      The    government  eno-aged  in 

war  with  the  United  Provinces.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons readily  voted  sums  unexampled  in  our  history, 
sums  exceeding  those  which  had  supported  the  fleets 
and  armies  of  Cromwell  at  the  time  when  his  power 
was  the  terror  of  all  the  world.  But  such  was  the 
extravagance,  dishonesty,  and  incapacity  of  those  who 
had  succeeded  to  his  authority,  that  this  liberality 
proved  worse  than  useless.  The  sycophants  of  the 
court,  ill  qualified  to  contend  against  the  great  men 
who  then  directed  the  arms  of  Holland,  against  such  a 
statesman  as  De  Witt,  and  such  a  commander  as  De 
Ruyter,  made  fortunes  rapidly,  while  the  sailors  mu- 
tinied from  very  hunger,  while  the  dockyards  were 
unguarded,  w^hile  the  ships  were  leaky  and  w'ithout 
'  rigging.  It  was  at  length  determined  to  abandon 
all  schemes  of  offensive  war ;  and  it  soon  appeared 
that  even    a  defensive   war  was  a    task  too  hard  for 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  211 

that  administration.  The  Dutch  fleet  sailed  up  the 
Tliames,  and  burned  the  ships  of  war  which  lay  at 
Chatham.  It  was  said  that,  on  the  very  day  of  tliat 
great  humiliation,  the  King  feasted  with  the  ladies  of 
his  seraglio,  and  amused  himself  with  hunting  a  moth 
about  the  supper  room.  Then,  at  length,  tardy  justice 
was  done  to  the  memory  of  Oliver.  Everywhere  men 
magnified  his  valour,  genius,  and  patriotism.  Every- 
where it  was  remembered  how,  when  he  ruled,  all 
foreign  powers  had  trembled  at  the  name  of  England, 
how  the  States  General,  now  so  haughty,  had  crouched 
at  his  feet,  and  how,  when  it  was  known  that  he  was 
no  more,  Amsterdam  was  lighted  up  as  for  a  great 
deliverance,  and  children  ran  along  the  canals,  shout- 
ing for  joy  that  the  devil  was  dead.  Even  Royalists 
exclaimed  that  the  State  could  be  saved  only  by  call- 
ino;  the  old  soldiers  of  the  Commonwealth  to  arms. 
Soon  the  capital  began  to  feel  the  miseries  of  a  block- 
ade. Fuel  was  scarcely  to  be  procured.  Tilbury  Fort, 
the  place  where  Elizabeth  had,  with  manly  spirit, 
hurled  foul  scorn  at  Parma  and  Spain,  was  insulted  by 
the  invaders.  The  roar  of  foreign  guns  was  heard, 
for  the  first  and  last  time,  by  the  citizens  of  London. 
In  the  Council  it  was  seriously  proposed  that,  if  the 
enemy  advanced,  the  Tower  should  be  abandoned. 
Great  multitudes  of  people  assembled  in  the  streets 
crying  out  that  England  was  bought  and  sold.  The 
houses  and  carriages  of  the  ministers  were  attacked  by 
the  populace  ;  and  it  seemed  likely  that  the  govern- 
ment would  have  to  deal  at  once  with  an  invasion  and 
with  an  insurrection.  The  extreme  danger,  it  is  tnie, 
soon  passed  by.  A  treaty  was  concluded,  very  different 
from  the  treaties  which  Oliver  had  been  in  the  liabit 
of  signing  ;  and  the  nation   was  once  more  at   pear.p 


212  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

but  was  in  a  mood  scarcely  less  fierce  and  sullen  than 
in  the  days  of  shipinoney. 

The  discontent  engendered  by  maladministi-ation  was 
heightened  by  calamities  which  the  best  administration 
could  not  have  averted.  While  the  ignominious  war 
with  Holland  was  raging,  London  suffered  two  great 
disasters,  such  as  never,  in  so  short  a  space  of  time, 
befell  one  city.  A  pestilence,  surpassing  in  horror 
any  that  during  three  centux'ies  had  visited  the  island, 
swept  away,  in  six  months,  more  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand human  beings.  And  scarcely  had  the  dead  cart 
ceased  to  go  its  rounds,  when  a  fire,  such  as  had  not 
been  known  in  Europe  since  the  conflagration  of  Rome 
under  Nero,  laid  in  ruins  the  whole  City,  fi'om  the 
Tower  to  the  Temple,  and  from  the  river  to  the  pur- 
lieus of  Smithfield. 

Had  there  been  a  general  election  while  the  nation 
Opposition  "^^^  Smarting  under  so  many  disgraces  and 
iiou'^se  of  misfortunes,  it  is  probable  that  the  Roundheads 
Commons.  -vvould  havc  regained  ascendency  in  the  state. 
But  the  Parliament  was  still  the  Cavalier  Parliament, 
chosen  in  the  transport  of  loyalty  which  had  followed 
the  Restoration.  Nevertheless  it  soon  became  evident 
that  no  English  legislature,  however  loyal,  would  now 
consent  to  be  merely  what  the  legislature  had  been 
under  the  Tudors.  From  the  death  of  Elizabeth  to  the 
eve  of  the  civil  war,  the  Puritans,  who  predominated 
in  the  representative  body,  had  been  constantly,  by  a 
dexterous  use  of  the  power  of  the  purse,  encroaching 
on  the  province  of  the  executive  government.  The 
gentlemen  who,  after  the  Restoration,  filled  the  Lower 
House,  though  they  abhorred  the  Puritan  name,  Mere 
well  pleased  to  inherit  the  fruit  of  the  Puritan  policy. 
They  were  indeed  most  willing  to  employ  the  power 


Ch.  n.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  213 

which  they  possessed  in  the  state  for  the  purpose  of  mak- 
ing- tlieir  Kiiic:  inio;hty  and  lionoiired,  both  at  home  and 
abroad  :  but  with  the  power  itself  they  w^ere  resolved 
not  to  part.  The  great  English  revolution  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  that  is  to  say,  the  transfer  of  the 
supreme  control  of  the  executive  administration  from 
the  crown  to  the  House  of  Commons,  was,  through 
the  whole  long  existence  of  this  Parliament,  jn-oceeding 
noiselessly,  but  rapidly  and  steadily.  Charles,  kept  poor 
by  his  follies  and  vices,  wanted  money.  The  Commons 
alone  could  legally  grant  him  money.  They  could  not 
be  prevented  from  putting  their  own  price  on  their 
grants.  The  price  which  they  put  on  their  grants 
was  this,  that  they  should  be  allowed  to  interfere  with 
every  one  of  the  King's  prerogatives,  to  wring  from 
him  his  consent  to  laws  which  he  disliked,  to  break  up 
cabinets,  to  dictate  the  coui'se  of  foreign  policy,  and 
even  to  direct  the  administration  of  war.  To  the  royal 
office,  and  the  royal  person,  they  loudly  and  sincerely 
professed  the  strongest  attachment.  But  to  Clarendon 
they  owed  no  allegiance  ;  and  they  fell  on  him  as  furi- 
ously as  their  predecessors  had  fallen  on  Straf-  p.^ji  ^f 
ford.  The  minister's  virtues  and  vices  alike  ciarenaon. 
contributed  to  his  ruin.  He  was  the  ostensible  head 
of  the  administi-ation,  and  was  therefore  held  resjH)n- 
sible  even  for  those  acts  which  he  had  strongly,  but 
vainly,  opposed  in  Council.  He  was  regarded  by  the 
Puritans,  and  by  all  who  ])itied  them,  as  an  implacable 
bigot,  a  second  Land,  with  much  more  than  Laud's 
understandin<i.  He  had  on  all  occasions  maintained 
that  the  Act  of  Indemnity  ought  to  l)e  strictly  ob- 
served ;  and  this  part  of  his  conduct,  though  highly 
honourable  to  him,  made  him  hateful  to  all  those  Roy- 
alists who   wished  to  repair  their  ruined   fortunes  by 


214  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

suing  the  Roundheads  for  damages  and  mesne  profits. 
The  Presbyterians  of  Scotland  attributed  to  him  the 
downfall  of  their  Church.  The  Papists  of  Ireland  at- 
tributed to  him  the  loss  of  their  lands.  As  father  of 
the  Duchess  of  York,  he  had  an  obvious  motive  for 
wishing  that  there  might  be  a  barren  Queen  ;  and  he 
"was  therefore  suspected  of  liaving  purposely  recom- 
mended one.  The  sale  of  Dunkirk  was  justly  im- 
puted to  him.  For  the  war  with  Holland  he  was,  with 
less  justice,  held  accountable.  His  hot  temper,  his  ar- 
rogant deportment,  the  indelicate  eagerness  with  which 
he  grasped  at  riches,  the  ostentation  w^ith  which  he 
squandered  them,  his  picture  gallery,  filled  with  mas- 
terpieces of  Vandyke  w^hich  had  once  been  the  property 
of  ruined  Cavaliers,  his  palace,  which  reared  its  long 
and  stately  front  right  opposite  to  the  humbler  resi- 
dence of  our  Kings,  dre^v  on  him  much  deserved,  and 
some  undeserved,  censure.  When  the  Dutch  fleet  was 
in  the  Thames,  it  was  against  the  Chancellor  that  the 
rage  of  the  populace  was  chiefly  directed.  His  windows 
were  broken,  the  trees  of  his  garden  cut  down,  and  a 
gibbet  set  up  before  his  door.  But  nowhere  was  he  more 
detested  than  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  unable 
to  perceive  that  the  time  was  fast  approaching  when 
that  House,  if  it  continued  to  exist  at  all,  must  be  su- 
preme in  the  state,  when  the  management  of  that  House 
would  be  the  most  important  department  of  politics, 
and  when,  Avithout  the  help  of  men  possessing  the  ear 
of  that  House,  it  would  be  impossible  to  carry  on  the 
government.  He  obstinately  persisted  in  considering 
the  Parliament  as  a  body  in  no  respect  differing  from 
the  Parliament  which  had  been  sitting  when,  forty  years 
before,  he  first  began  to  study  law  at  the  Temple.  He 
did  not  wish  to  depi-ive  the  legislature  of  those  powers 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  215 

wliich  were  inherent  in  it  by  the  old  constitution  of 
the  realm :  but  the  new  development  of  those  powers, 
though  a  development  natural,  inevitable,  and  to  be 
j)revented  only  by  utterly  destroying  the  powers  them- 
selves, disiiusted  and  alarmed  him.  Nothino;  would 
have  induced  him  to  put  the  great  seal  to  a  writ  for 
raising  shipmoney,  or  to  give  his  voice  in  Council  for 
committing  a  member  of  Parliament  to  the  Tower,  on 
account  of  words  spoken  in  debate  :  but,  when  the  Com- 
mons began  to  inquire  in  what  manner  the  money  voted 
for  tlie  war  had  been  wasted,  and  to  examine  into  the 
malachninistration  of  the  navy,  he  flamed  with  indigna- 
tion. Such  inquiry,  according  to  him,  was  out  of  their 
province.  He  admitted  that  the  House  was  a  most 
loyal  assembly,  that  it  had  done  good  service  to  the 
crown,  and  that  'ts  intentions  were  excellent.  But, 
both  in  ])ublic  and  in  the  closet,  he,  on  every  occasion, 
expressed  his  concern  that  gentlemen  so  sincerely  at- 
tached to  monarchy  should  unadvisedly  incroach  on  the 
prerogative  of  the  monarch.  Widely  as  they  differed 
in  spirit  from  the  members  of  the  Long  Parliament, 
they  yet,  he  said,  imitated  that  Parliament  in  meddling 
Avith  matters  which  lay  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  Es- 
tates of  the  realm,  and  which  were  subject  to  the  au- 
thority of  the  crown  alone.  The  country,  he  main- 
tained, would  never  be  well  governed  till  the  knio;hts 
of  shires  and  the  burgesses  were  content  to  be  what 
their  ])redecessors  had  been  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth. 
All  the  plans  which  men  more  observant  than  himself 
of  the  signs  of  that  time  proposed,  for  the  purj)ose  of 
maintaining  a  good  understanding  between  the  Court 
and  the  Commons,  he  disdainfully  rejected  as  crude 
projects,  inconsistent  witli  the  old  polity  of  Emrland. 
Towards  the  young  orators,  Avho  were  rising  to  distinc- 


216  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  U. 

tion  and  authority  in  the  Lower  House,  his  deportment 
was  ungracious  ;  and  he  succeeded  in  making  them, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  his  deadly  enemies.  In- 
deed one  of  his  most  serious  faults  was  an  inordinate 
contempt  for  youth  :  and  this  contempt  was  the  more 
unjustifiable,  because  his  own  experience  in  English 
politics  was  by  no  means  proportioned  to  his  age.  For 
so  great  a  part  of  his  life  had  been  passed  abroad  that 
he  knew  less  of  that  world  in  which  he  found  himself  on 
his  return  than  many  who  might  have  been  his  sons. 

For  these  reasons  he  was  disliked  by  the  Commons. 
For  very  different  reasons  he  was  equally  disliked  by 
the  Court.  His  morals  as  well  as  his  politics  M'ere 
those  of  an  earlier  generation.  Even  when  he  was  a 
young  law  student,  living  much  with  men  of  wit  and 
pleasure,  his  natural  gravity  and  his  religious  principles 
had  to  a  great  extent  preserved  him  from  the  contagion 
of  fashionable  debauchery ;  and  he  was  by  no  means 
likely,  in  advanced  years  and  in  declining  health,  to 
turn  libertine.  On  the  vices  of  the  young  and  gay  he 
looked  with  an  aversion  almost  as  bitter  and  contempt- 
uous as  that  which  he  felt  for  the  theological  errors  of 
the  sectaries.  He  missed  no  oppoi'tnnity  of  showing 
his  scorn  of  the  mimics,  revellers,  and  courtesans  who 
croAvded  the  palace  ;  and  the  admonitions  which  he  ad- 
dressed to  the  King  himself  were  very  sharp,  and,  what 
Charles  disliked  still  more,  very  long.  Scarcely  any 
voice  was  raised  in  favour  of  a  minister  loaded  with  the 
double  odium  of  faults  Avhich  roused  the  fury  of  the 
people,  and  of  virtues  which  annoyed  and  importuned 
the  sovereign.  Southampton  was  no  more.  Ormond 
performed  the  duties  of  friendship  manfully  and  faith- 
fully, but  in  vain.  The  Chancellor  fell  with  a  great 
ruin.     The  seal  was  taken  from  him  :  the  Commons 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  217 

impeached  liim  :  his  head  was  not  safe  :  he  fled  from 
the  country  :  an  act  was  passed  wliich  doomed  him  to 
perpetual  exile  ;  and  those  who  had  assailed  and  un- 
dermined him  began  to  struggle  for  the  fragments  of 
his  power. 

The  sacrifice  of  Clarendon  in  some  decree  took  off 
the  edge  of  the  public  appetite  for  revenge.  Yet  was 
the  anger  excited  by  the  profusion  and  negligence  of 
the  government,  and  by  the  miscarriages  of  the  late 
war,  by  no  means  extinguished.  The  counsellors  of 
Charles,  with  the  fete  of  the  Chancellor  before  their 
eyes,  were  anxious  for  their  own  safety.  Tliey  accord- 
ingly advised  their  master  to  soothe  the  irritation  which 
prevailed  both  in  the  Parliament  and  throughout  the 
country,  and  for  that  end,  to  take  a  step  which  has  no 
parallel  in  the  history  of  the  House  of  Stuart,  and  which 
was  worthy  of  the  prudence  and  magnanimity  of  Oliver. 

We  have  now  reached  a  point  at  which  the  histoiy 
of  the  great  English  revolution  begins  to  be  state  of 
complicated  with  the  history  of  foreign  poli-  politics,  and 
tics.  The  power  of  Spain  had,  during  many  oV  France, 
years,  been  declining.  Siie  still,  it  is  true,  held  in 
Europe  the  Milanese  and  the  two  Sicilies,  Belgium, 
and  Franche  Comt^.  In  America  her  dominions  still 
spread,  on  both  sides  of  the  equator,  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  torrid  zone.  But  this  great  body  had  been 
smitten  with  palsy,  and  was  not  only  incapable  of  giv- 
ing molestation  to  other  states,  but  could  not,  without 
assistance,  repel  aggression.  France  was  now,  beyond 
all  doubt,  the  greatest  power  in  Europe.  Her  re- 
sources have,  since  those  days,  absolutely  increased, 
but  have  not  increased  so  fast  as  the  resources  of  En<:- 
land.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that,  a  hundred 
and  eighty  years  ago,  the  empire  of  Russia,  now  a  mon- 


218  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

archy  of  tlie  first  class,  was  as  entirely  out  of  the  sys- 
tem of  European  politics  as  Abyssinia  or  Siani,  that 
the  House  of  Brandenburg  was  then  hardly  more 
powerful  than  the  House  of  Saxony,  and  that  the  re- 
public of  the  United  States  had  not  then  begun  to 
exist.  The  weight  of  France,  therefore,  though  still 
very  considerable,  has  relatively  diminished.  Her  ter- 
ritory was  not  in  the  days  of  Lewis  the  Fourteenth 
quite  so  extensive  as  at  present :  but  it  was  large,  com- 
pact, fertile,  well  placed  both  for  attack  and  for  defence, 
situated  in  a  happy  climate,  and  inhabited  by  a  brave, 
active,  and  ingenious  people.  The  state  implicitl^^ 
obeyed  the  direction  of  a  single  mind.  The  great  fiefs 
which,  three  hundred  years  before,  had  been,  in  all  but 
name,  independent  princij)alities,  had  been  amiexed  to 
the  crown.  Only  a  few  old  men  could  remember  the 
last  meeting  of  the  States  General.  The  resistance 
which  the  Huguenots,  the  nobles,  and  the  parliaments 
had  offered  to  the  kingly  power,  had  been  put  down 
by  the  two  great  Cardinals  who  had  ruled  the  nation 
during  forty  years.  The  government  was  now  a  des- 
potism, but,  at  least  in  its  dealings  with  the  upper 
classes,  a  mild  and  generous  despotism,  tempered  by 
courteous  manners  and  chivalrous  sentiments.  The 
means  at  the  disposal  of  the  sovereign  were,  for  that 
age,  truly  formidable.  His  revenue,  raised,  it  is  true, 
by  a  severe  and  unequal  taxation  which  pressed  heavily 
on  the  cultivators  of  the  soil,  far  exceeded  that  of  any 
other  potentate.  His  army,  excellently  disciplined,  and 
commanded  by  the  greatest  generals  then  living,  al- 
ready consisted  of  more  than  a  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  men.  Such  an  array  of  regular  troops  had 
not  been  seen  in  Europe  since  the  do^vnfall  of  the  Ro- 
man empire.     Of  maritime  powers  Fi'ance  was  not  the 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  219 

first.  But,  though  she  had  rivals  on  the  sea,  she  had  not 
yet  a  superior.  Such  was  her  strength  during  the  last 
forty  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that  no  enemy 
could  singly  withstand  her,  and  that  two  great  coali- 
tions, in  which  half  Christendom  was  united  ao-fvinst 
her,  failed  of  success. 

The  personal  qualities  of  the  French  King  added  to 
the  res])ect  inspired  by  the  power  and  impor-  character 
tance  of  his  kino;dom.  No  sovereign  has  ever  xiv. 
represented  the  majesty  of  a  great  state  with  more  dig- 
nity and  grace.  He  was  his  own  prime  minister,  and 
performed  the  duties  of  a  jirinie  minister  with  an 
ability  and  an  industry  which  could  not  be  reasonably 
expected  from  one  who  had  in  infancy  succeeded  to  a 
crown,  and  who  had  been  surrounded  by  flatterers 
before  he  could  speak.  He  had  shown,  in  an  eminent 
degree,  two  talents  invaluable  to  a  prince,  the  talent 
of  choosing  his  servants  well,  and  the  talent  of  appro- 
priating to  himself  the  chief  part  of  the  credit  of  their 
acts.  In  his  dealings  with  foreign  powers  he  had  some 
generosity,  but  no  justice.  To  unhappy  allies  who 
threw  themselves  at  his  feet,  and  had  no  hope  but  in 
his  compassion,  he  extended  his  protection  with  a  ro- 
mantic disinterestedness,  which  seemed  better  suited  to 
a  knight  errant  than  to  a  statesman.  But  he  broke 
through  the  most  sacred  ties  of  pubhc  faith  without 
scruple  or  shame,  whenever  they  interfered  with  his 
interest,  or  with  what  he  called  his  glory.  His  perfidy 
and  violence,  however,  excited  less  enmity  than  the 
insolence  with  which  he  constantly  reminded  his  neigh- 
bours of  his  own  greatness  and  of  their  littleness.  He 
did  not  at  this  time  profess  the  austere  devotion  wJiicn, 
at  a  later  period,  gave  to  his  court  the  aspect  of  a  mon- 
astery.    On  the  contrary,  he  was  as  hcentious,  though 


220  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H. 

by  no  means  as  frivolous  and  indolent,  as  his  brotlier 
of  England.  But  he  was  a  sincere  Roman  Catholic  ; 
and  botli  his  conscience  and  his  vanity  impelled  him  to 
use  his  power  for  the  defence  and  propagation  of  the 
true  faith,  after  the  example  of  his  renowned  predeces- 
sors, Clovis,  Charlemagne,  and  Saint  Lewis. 

Our  ancestors  naturally  looked  with  serious  alarm  on 
the  growing  power  of  France.  This  feeling,  in  itself 
perfectly  reasonable,  was  mingled  with  other  feelings 
less  praiseworthy.  France  was  our  old  enemy.  It  was 
against  France  that  the  most  glorious  battles  recorded 
in  our  annals  had  been  fought.  The  conquest  of  France 
had  been  twice  effected  by  the  Plantagenets.  The  loss 
of  France  had  been  long  remembered  as  a  great  national 
disaster.  The  title  of  King  of  France  was  still  borne 
by  our  sovereigns.  The  lilies  of  France  still  appeared, 
mingled  with  our  own  lions,  on  the  shield  of  the  House 
of  Stuart.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  dread  inspired 
by  Spain  had  suspended  the  animosity  of  which  France 
had  anciently  been  the  object.  But  the  dread  inspired 
by  Spain  had  given  place  to  contemptuous  compassion  ; 
and  France  was  again  regarded  as  our  national  foe. 
The  sale  of  Dunkirk  to  France  had  been  the  most  gen- 
erally unpopular  act  of  the  restored  King.  Attachment 
to  France  had  been  prominent  among  the  crimes  im- 
puted by  the  Commons  to  Clarendon.  Even  in  trifles  the 
pubhc  feeling  showed  itself  When  a  brawl  took  place 
in  the  streets  of  Westminster  between  the  retinues  of 
the  French  and  Spanish  embassies,  the  populace,  though 
forcibly  prevented  from  interfei'ing,  had  given  unequiv- 
ocal proofs  that  the  old  antipathy  was  not  extinct, 

France  and  Spain  were  now  engaged  in  a  more  seri- 
ous contest.  One  of  the  chief  objects  of  the  ]iolicy  of 
Lewis  throughout  his  life  was  to  extend  his  dominions 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  221 

towards  the  Rhine.  For  tliis  end  he  had  engao-ed  in 
war  with  Spain,  and  he  was  now  in  the  full  career  of 
conquest.  The  United  Provinces  saw  Avith  anxiety  the 
progress  of  his  arms.  That  renowned  federation  liad 
reached  the  height  of  power,  prosperity,  and  glory. 
The  Batavian  territory,  conquered  from  the  waves,  and 
defended  against  them  by  human  art,  was  in  extent 
little  superior  to  the  principality  of  Wales.  But  all  that 
narrow  space  was  a  busy  and  populous  hive,  in  which 
new  wealth  was  every  day  created,  and  in  which  vast 
masses  of  old  wealth  were  hoarded.  The  aspect  of 
Holland,  the  rich  cultivation,  the  innumerable  canals, 
the  ever  whirling  mills,  tlie  endless  fleets  of  barges,  the 
quick  succession  of  great  towns,  the  ports  bristling  with 
thousands  of  masts,  the  largo  and  stately  mansions,  the 
trim  villas,  the  richly  furnislied  apartments,  the  picture 
galleries,  the  summer  houses,  the  tulip  beds,  produced 
on  Englisli  travellers  in  that  age  an  eflect  similar  to  the 
effect  which  the  first  sight  of  England  now  produces  on 
a  Norwegian  or  a  Canadian.  The  States  General  had 
been  compelled  to  humble  themselves  before  Cromwell. 
But  after  the  Restoration  they  had  taken  their  revenge, 
had  waged  war  with  success  against  Charles,  and  had 
concluded  peace  on  honourable  terms.  Rich,  however, 
as  the  Republic  was,  and  highly  considered  in  Europe, 
she  was  no  match  for  the  i)ower  of  Lewis.  She  appre- 
hended, not  without  good  cause,  that  his  kingdom  might 
soon  be  extended  to  her  frontiers  ;  and  she  mio-ht  well 
dread  the  immediate  vicinity  of  a  monarch  so  great,  so 
ambitious,  and  so  unscrupulous.  Yet  it  was  not  easy 
to  devise  any  expedient  whicii  might  avert  the  danger. 
The  Dutch  alone  could  not  turn  the  scale  against  France. 
On  the  side  of  the  Rhine  no  help  was  to  be  expected. 
Several  German  princes  had  been  gained  by  Lewis  ;  and 


222  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H 

the  Emperor  himself  was  embarrassed  by  the  discon- 
tents of  Hungary.  England  was  separated  from  the 
United  Provinces  by  the  recollection  of  cruel  injuries 
recently  inflicted  and  endured  ;  and  her  policy  had, 
since  the  Restoration,  been  so  devoid  of  wisdom  and 
spirit,  that  it  was  scarcely  possible  to  expect  from  her 
any  valuable  assistance. 

But  the  fate  of  Clarendon  and  the  growing  ill  hu- 
mour of  the  Parliament  determined  the  advisers  of 
Charles  to  adopt  on  a  sudden  a  policy  which  amazed 
and  dehghted  the  nation. 

The  English  resident  at  Brussels,  Sir  William  Tem- 
The  Triple  V^^i  ^^^  ^^  the  most  cxpert  diplomatists  and 
AUiance.  most  plcasiug  wHtcrs  of  that  age,  had  already 
represented  to  his  court  that  it  was  both  desirable  and 
practicable  to  enter  into  engagements  with  the  States 
General  for  the  purpose  of  checking  the  progress  of 
France.  For  a  time  his  suggestions  had  been  slighted; 
but  it  was  now  thought  expedient  to  act  on  them.  He 
was  commissioned  to  negotiate  with  the  States  General. 
He  proceeded  to  the  Hague,  and  soon  came  to  an  un- 
derstanding with  John  De  Witt,  then  the  chief  minis- 
ter of  Holland.  Sweden,  small  as  her  resources  were, 
had,  forty  years  before,  been  raised  by  the  genius  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus  to  a  high  rank  among  European 
powers,  and  had  not  yet  descended  to  her  natural  po- 
sition. She  was  induced  to  join  on  this  occasion  with 
Enrrland  and  the  States.  Thus  was  formed  that  coali- 
tion  known  as  the  Triple  Alhance.  Lewis  showed  signs 
of  vexation  and  resentment,  but  did  not  think  it  politic 
to  draw  on  himself  the  hostility  of  such  a  confederacy 
in  addition  to  that  of  Spain.  He  consented,  therefore, 
to  relinquish  a  large  part  of  the  territory  which  his 
armies  had  occupied.     Peace  was  restored  to  Europe ; 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  223 

and  the  English  government,  lately  an  object  of  gen- 
eral contempt,  was,  during  a  few  months,  regarded  by 
foreign  powers  with  res})ect  scarcely  less  than  that 
which  the  Protector  had  inspired. 

At  home  tiie   Triple  Alliance   was   popular  in    the 
hiohest  deo-ree.     It  gratified  alike  national   animosity 

kT<  <^  <-*  * 

and  national  ])ride.  It  put  a  Ihnit  to  the  encroach- 
ments of  a  ])owerful  and  ambitious  neighbour.  It 
bound  the  leading  Protestant  states  together  in  close 
union.  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads  rejoiced  in  com- 
mon :  but  the  joy  of  the  Roundhead  was  even  greater 
than  that  of  the  Cavalier.  For  England  had  now  allied 
herself  strictly  with  a  country  re))ublican  in  govern- 
ment and  Presbyterian  in  religion,  against  a  country 
ruled  bv  an  arbitrarv  prince  and  attached  to  the  Ro- 
man  Catholic  Church.  The  House  of  Commons  loud- 
ly aj)j)lauded  the  treaty  ;  and  some  uucourtly  grumblers 
described  it  as  the  only  good  thing  that  had  been  done 
since  the  King  came  in. 

The  King,  however,  cared  little  for  the  approbation 
of  his  Pai-liameut  or  of  his  people.  The  Triple  t^^  country 
Alliance  he  regarded  merely  as  a  temporary  ^'*'''^" 
expedient  for  quieting  discontents  which  luul  seemed 
likely  to  become  serious.  The  independence,  the  safety, 
the  dignity  of  the  nation  over  which  he  presided  were 
nothing  to  him.  He  had  begun  to  find  constitutional 
restraints  ffidlinir-  Already  had  been  formed  in  the 
Parliament  a  strong  connection  known  by  the  name 
of  the  Country  Party.  That  party  included  all  the 
public  men  who  leaned  towards  Puritanism  and  Re- 
j)ublicanism,  and  many  who,  though  attached  to  the 
Church  and  to  hereditary  monarchy,  had  been  driven 
into  o})position  by  dread  of  Poj)ery,  by  dread  of  France, 
and  b}'  disgust  at  the  extravagance,  dissoluteness,  and 


2'Z4:  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

faitlilessiiess  of  the  court.  The  power  of  this  band  of 
politicians  was  constantly  growing.  Every  year  some  of 
those  members  who  had  been  returned  to  Parliament 
during  the  loyal  excitement  of  1661  had  dropped  off; 
and  the  vacant  seats  had  generally  been  filled  by  per- 
sons less  tractable.  Charles  did  not  think  himself  a 
King  while  an  assembly  of  subjects  could  call  for  his 
accounts  before  paying  his  debts,  and  could  insist  on 
knowing  which  of  his  mistresses  or  boon  companions 
had  intercepted  the  money  destined  for  the  equipping 
and  manning  of  the  fleet.  Though  not  very  studious 
of  fame,  he  was  galled  by  the  taunts  which  were  some- 
times uttered  in  the  discussions  of  the  Commons,  and 
on  one  occasion  attempted  to  restrain  the  freedom  of 
speech  by  disgraceful  means.  Sir  John  Coventry,  a 
country  gentleman,  had,  in  debate,  sneered  at  the  prof- 
ligacy of  the  court.  In  any  former  reign  he  would 
probably  have  been  called  before  the  Privy  Council 
and  committed  to  the  Tower.  A  diflerent  course  was 
now  taken.  A  gang  of  bullies  was  secretly  sent  to  slit 
the  nose  of  the  offender.  This  ignoble  reveno-e,  in- 
stead  of  quelling  the  spirit  of  opposition,  raised  such  a 
tempest  that  the  King  was  compelled  to  submit  to  the 
cruel  humiliation  of  passing  an  act  which  attainted  the 
instruments  of  his  revenge,  and  which  took  from  him 
the  power  of  pardoning  them. 

But,  impatient  as  he  was  of  constitutional  restraints, 
how  was  he  to  emancipate  himself  from  them  ?  He 
could  make  himself  despotic  only  by  the  help  of  a  great 
standing  army ;  and  such  an  army  was  not  in  exist- 
ence. His  revenues  did  indeed  enable  him  to  keep 
up  some  regular  troops  :  but  those  troops,  though 
numei'ous  enough  to  excite  great  jealousy  and  appre- 
hension in  the  House  of  Commons  and  in  the  coun- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES    THE    SECOND.  225 

try,  were  scarcely  numerous  enough  to  protect  Wliite- 
hall  aticl  the  Tower  against  a  rising  of  the  mob  of 
London.  Such  risings  were,  indeed,  to  be  dreaded; 
for  it  was  calculated  that  in  the  capital  and  its  sub- 
urbs dwelt  not  less  than  twenty  thousand  of  Oliver's 
old  soldiers. 

Since  the  King  was  bent  on  emancipating  himself 
from  the  control  of  Parliament,  and  since,  in  connection 
such  an  enterprise,  he  could  not  hope  for  ef-  ^hirHe^ir 
fectual  aid  at  home,  it  followed  that  he  must  ^""^  *'"'^"'=*- 
look  for  aid  abroad.  The  power  and  wealth  of  the 
King  of  France  might  be  equal  to  the  arduous  task  of 
establishing  absolute  monarchy  in  England.  Such  an 
ally  would  undoubtedly  expect  substantial  proofs  of 
gratitude  for  such  a  service.  Charles  must  descend  to 
the  rank  of  a  great  vassal,  and  must  make  peace  and 
war  according  to  the  directions  of  the  government 
which  protected  him.  His  relation  to  Lewis  would 
closely  resemble  that  in  Avhich  the  Rajah  of  Nagpore 
and  the  King  of  Oude  now  stand  to  the  British  oov- 
ernment.  Those  piinces  are  bound  to  aid  the  East 
Lidia  Company  in  all  hostilities,  defensive  and  offen- 
sive, and  to  have  no  diplomatic  relations  but  such  as 
the  East  Lidia  Company  shall  sanction.  The  Com- 
pany in  return  guarantees  them  against  insurrection. 
As  long  as  they  faithfully  discharge  their  obligations  to 
the  ])aram()unt  power,  they  ai'e  ])ermitted  to  dispose 
of  large  revenues,  to  fill  their  jialaces  with  beautiful 
women,  to  besot  themselves  in  the  company  of  their 
favourite  revellers,  and  to  oppress  with  impunity  any 
subject  who  may  incui  their  dis]ileasure.  Such  a  life 
woidd  oe  insupportable  to  a  man  of  high  spirit  and 
of  powerful  understanding.  But  to  Charles,  sen- 
sual,  indolent,  unequal  to  any  strong  intellectual  ex 

VOL.  I.  15 


226  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

ertion,  and  destitute  alike  of  all  patriotism  and  of  all 
sense  of  personal  dignity,  the  prospect  had  nothing  un- 
pleasing. 

That  the  Duke  of  York  should  have  concurred  in 
the  design  of  degrading  that  crown  which  it  was  prob- 
able that  he  would  himself  one  day  wear  may  seem 
more  extraordinary.  For  his  nature  was  haughty  and 
imperious ;  and,  indeed,  he  continued  to  the  very  last 
to  show,  by  occasional  starts  and  struggles,  his  impa- 
tience of  the  French  yoke.  But  he  was  almost  as  much 
debased  by  superstition  as  his  brother  by  indolence  and 
vice.  James  was  now  a  Roman  Catholic.  Religious 
bigotry  had  become  the  dominant  sentiment  of  his  nar- 
row and  stubborn  mind,  and  had  so  mingled  itself  with 
his  love  of  rule,  that  the  two  passions  could  hardly  be 
distino-uished  from  each  other.  It  seemed  hio-hly  im- 
probable  that,  without  foreign  aid,  he  would  be  able  to 
obtain  ascendency  or  even  toleration  for  his  own  ftiith  : 
and  he  was  in  a  temper  to  see  nothing  humiliating  in 
any  step  which  might  promote  the  interests  of  the  true 
Church. 

A  negotiation  was  opened  which  lasted  during  sev- 
eral months.  The  chief  ao-ent  between  the  English 
and  French  courts  was  the  beautiful,  graceful,  and 
intelligent  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Orleans,  sister  of 
Charles,  sister  in  law  of  Lewis,  and  a  favourite  with 
both.  The  King  of  England  offered  to  declare  himself 
a  Roman  Catholic,  to  dissolve  the  Triple  Alliance,  and 
to  join  with  France  against  Holland,  if  France  would 
engage  to  lend  him  such  military  and  pecuniary  aid  as 
might  make  him  independent  of  his  Parliament.  Lewis 
at  first  affected  to  receive  these  propositions  coolly,  and 
at  length  agreed  to  them  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  is 
conferring  a  great  favour:  but  in   truth,   the    course 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  227 

wliicli  he  had  resolved  to  take  was  one  by  which  he 
miii'lit  gain  and  could  not  lose. 

It  seems  certain  that  he  never  seriously  thought  of 
establishino;  despotism  and  Popery  in  Eng-  views  of 
land  by  force  of  arms.  He  nuist  have  been  J;^speirto'^ 
aware  that  such  an  enterprise  -would  be  in  i^"*''''^"'^- 
the  hio-hest  degree  arduous  and  liazardous,  that  it  would 
task  to  the  utmost  all  the  energies  of  France  during 
many  years,  and  that  it  Avould  be  altogether  incompati- 
ble with  more  promising  schemes  of  aggrandisement, 
which  were  dear  to  his  heart.  He  would  indeed  will- 
ingly have  acquired  the  merit  and  the  glory  of  doing 
a  great  service  on  reasonable  terms  to  the  Church  of 
which  he  was  a  member.  But  he  was  little  disposed 
to  imitate  his  ancestors  who,  in  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries,  had  led  the  flower  of  French  chiv- 
alry to  die  in  Syria  and  Egypt ;  and  he  well  knew 
that  a  crusade  against  Protestantism  in  Great  Britain 
would  not  be  less  perilous  than  the  expeditions  in  which 
the  armies  of  Lewis  the  Seventh  and  of  Lewis  the 
Ninth  had  perished.  He  had  no  motive  for  wishing 
the  Stuarts  to  be  absolute.  He  did  not  regard  the 
English  constitution  with  feelings  at  all  resembling 
those  which  have  in  later  times  induced  princes  to 
make  war  on  the  free  institutions  of  neighbouring  na- 
tions. At  present  a  great  party  zealous  for  popular 
government  has  ramifications  in  every  civilised  coun- 
try. Any  ini])ortant  advantage  gained  anyAvhere  by 
that  party  is  almost  certain  to  be  the  signal  for  gen- 
ei'al  commotion.  It  is  not  wonderful  that  govern- 
ments threatened  by  a  common  danger  should  com- 
bine for  the  purpose  of  mutual  insurance.  But  in  the 
seventeenth  century  no  such  danwr  existed.  Between 
the  public  mind  of  England  and  the   public   mind  of 


228  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

France,  there  was  a  great  gulpli.  Our  institutions  and 
our  factions  were  as  little  understood  at  Paris  as  at 
Constantinople.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  any  one 
of  the  forty  members  of  the  French  Academy  had  an 
English  volume  in  his  library,  or  knew  Shakspeare, 
Jonson,  or  Spenser,  even  by  name.  A  few  Hugue- 
nots, who  had  inherited  the  mutinous  spirit  of  their  an- 
cestors, might  perhaps  have  a  fellow  feeling  with  their 
brethren  in  the  faith,  the  English  Roundheads :  but  the 
Huguenots  had  ceased  to  be  formidable.  The  French, 
as  a  people, attached  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  proud 
of  the  greatness  of  their  King  and  of  their  own  loyalty, 
looked  on  our  struggles  against  Popery  and  ai'bitrary 
power,  not  only  without  admiration  or  sympathy,  but 
with  strong  disapprobation  and  disgust.  It  would  there- 
fore be  a  great  error  to  ascribe  tlie  conduct  of  Lewis  to 
apprehensions  at  all  resembling  those  which,  in  our  age, 
induced  the  Holy  Alliance  to  interfere  in  the  internal 
troubles  of  Naples  and  Spain. 

Nevertheless,  the  propositions  made  by  the  court  of 
Whitehall  were  most  welcome  to  him.  He  already 
meditated  piffantic  designs,  which  were  destined  to 
keep  Europe  in  constant  fermentation  during  more 
than  forty  years.  He  wished  to  humble  the  United 
Provinces,  and  to  annex  Belgium,  Franche  Comt^, 
and  Loraine  to  his  dominions.  Nor  was  this  all.  The 
King  of  Spain  was  a  sickly  child.  It  was  likely  that  he 
would  die  without  issue.  His  eldest  sister  was  Queen 
of  France.  A  day  would  almost  certainly  come,  and 
might  come  very  soon,  when  the  House  of  Bourbon 
might  lay  claim  to  that  vast  empire  on  which  the  sun 
never  set.  The  union  of  two  great  monarchies  under 
one  head  would  doubtless  be  opposed  by  a  continental 
coalition.      But  for  any  continental  cc»alition   France 


Ch.  II.J  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  229 

single  handed  was  a  match.  England  could  turn  the 
scale.  On  the  course  which,  in  such  a  crisis,  England 
might  pursue,  the  destinies  of  the  world  would  depend  ; 
and  it  was  notorious  that  the  English  Parliament  and  na- 
tion were  strongly  attached  to  the  ])olicy  which  had  dic- 
tated the  Triple  Alliance.  Nothing,  therefore,  could  be 
more  gratifying  to  Lewis  than  to  learn  that  the  princes 
of  the  House  of  Stuart  needed  his  help,  and  were  willing 
to  purchase  that  help  by  unbounded  subserviency.  He 
determined  to  profit  by  the  opportunity,  and  laid  down 
for  himself  a  plan  to  which,  Avithout  deviation,  he  ad- 
hered, till  the  Revolution  of  1G88  disconcerted  all  his 
politics.  He  professed  himself  desirous  to  promote  the 
designs  of  the  English  court.  He  promised  large  aid. 
He  from  time  to  time  doled  out  such  aid  as  might  serve 
to  keep  hope  alive,  and  as  he  could  without  risk  or  in- 
convenience spare.  In  this  way,  at  an  expense  very 
much  less  than  that  which  he  incurred  in  buildino;  and 
decorating  Versailles  or  Marli,  he  succeeded  in  making 
England,  during  nearly  twenty  years,  almost  as  insig- 
nificant a  member  of  the  political  system  of  Europe  as 
the  republic  of  San  Marino. 

His  object  was  not  to  destroy  our  constitution,  but 
to  keep  the  various  elements  of  which  it  was  composed 
in  a  perpetual  state  of  conflict,  and  to  set  irreconcihxble 
enmity  between  those  who  had  the  power  of  the  purse 
and  those  who  had  the  ])ower  of  the  sword.  With 
this  view  he  bribed  and  stinudated  both  parties  in  turn, 
pensioned  at  once  the  ministers  of  the  crown  and  the 
chiefs  of  the  opposition,  encouraged  the  court  to  with- 
stand the  seditious  encroachments  of  the  Parliament, 
and  conveyed  to  the  Parliament  intimations  of  the  arbi- 
trary designs  of  the  court. 

One  of  the  devices  to  which  he  resorted  for  the  pur- 


230  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  li. 

pose  of  obtaining  an  ascendency  in  the  English  counsels 
deserves  especial  notice.  Charles,  though  incapable  of 
love  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  was  the  slave  of 
any  woman  whose  person  excited  his  desires,  and  whose 
airs  and  prattle  amused  his  leisure.  Indeed  a  husband 
would  be  justly  derided  who  should  bear  from  a  wife 
of  exalted  rank  and  spotless  virtue  half  the  insolence 
which  the  King  of  England  bore  from  concubines  who, 
while  thev  owed  evervthino;  to  his  bounty,  caressed  his 
courtiers  almost  before  his  face.  He  had  patiently  en- 
dured the  termagant  passions  of  Barbara  Palmer  and 
the  pert  vivacity  of  Eleanor  Gwynn.  Lewis  thought 
that  the  most  useful  envoy  who  could  be  sent  to  Lon- 
don, would  be  a  handsome,  licentious,  and  crafty 
Frenchwoman.  Such  a  Avoman  was  Louisa,  a  lady  of 
the  House  of  Querouaille,  whom  our  rude  ancestors 
called  Madam  Carwell,  She  was  soon  triumj)hant  over 
all  her  rivals,  was  created  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  was 
loaded  with  wealth,  and  obtained  a  dominion  which 
ended  only  with  the  life  of  Charles. 

The  most  important  conditions  of  the  alliance  be- 
Treaty  of  twccn  the  crowHS  were  digested  into  a  secret 
Dover.  treaty  which  was  signed  at  Dover  in  May 

1670,  just  ten  years  after  the  day  on  which  Charles 
had  landed  at  that  very  port  amidst  the  acclamations 
and  joyful  tears  of  a  too  confiding  people. 

By  this  treaty  Charles  bound  himself  to  make  public 
profession  of  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,  to  join  his 
arms  to  those  of  Lewis  for  the  purpose  of  destroying 
the  power  of  the  United  Provinces,  and  to  employ  the 
whole  strength  of  England,  by  land  and  sea,  in  support 
of  the  rights  of  the  House  of  Bourbon  to  the  vast 
monarchy  of  Spain.  Lewis,  on  the  other  hand,  en- 
gaged to  pay  a  large  subsidy,  and  promised  that,  if  any 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  231 

insurrection  should  break   out  in   England,   he   would 
send  an  anny  at  his  own  charge  to  support  his  ally. 

This  compact  was  made  with  gloomy  auspices.  Six 
weeks  after  it  had  been  sicrned  and  sealed,  the  charm- 
ing  princess,  whose  influence  over  her  brother  and 
brother  in  law  had  been  so  pernicious  to  her  country, 
was  no  more.  Her  death  gave  rise  to  horrible  sus- 
picions which,  for  a  moment,  seemed  likely  to  interrupt 
the  newly  formed  friendship  between  the  Hovises  of 
Stuart  and  Bourbon  :  but  in  a  short  time  fresh  assur- 
ances of  undiminished  good  will  were  exchanged  be- 
tween the  confederates. 

The  Duke  of  York,  too  dull  to  apprehend  danger,  or 
too  fanatical  to  care  about  it,  was  impatient  to  see  the 
article  touching  the  Roman  Catholic  relioion  carried 
into  immediate  execution :  but  Lewis  had  the  wisdom 
to  perceive  that,  if  this  course  were  taken,  there  would 
be  such  an  explosion  in  England  as  would  probably 
frustrate  those  parts  of  the  plan  which  he  had  most  at 
heart.  It  was  therefore  determined  that  Charles  shoidd 
still  call  himself  a  Protestant,  and  should  still,  at  high 
festivals,  receive  the  sacrament  accordino;  to  the  ritual 
of  the  Church  of  England.  His  more  scrupulous 
brother  ceased  to  appear  in  the  royal  chapel. 

About  this  time  died  the  Duchess  of  York,  daughter 
of  the  banished  Earl  of  Clarendon.  She  had  been, 
during  some  years,  a  concealed  Roman  Catholic.  She 
leil  two  daughters,  Mary  and  Anne,  afterwards  suc- 
cessively Queens  of  Great  Britain.  They  were  bred 
Protestants  by  the  positive  command  of  the  King,  who 
knew  that  it  woidd  be  vain  for  him  to  jn'ofess  himself 
a  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  if  children  who 
seemed  likely  to  inherit  his  throne  were,  by  his  permis- 
sion, brought  uj)as  members  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 


232  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

The  principal  servants  of  the  crown  at  this  time 
were  men  whose  names  have  justly  acquired  an  unen- 
viable notoriety.  We  must  take  heed,  however,  that 
we  do  not  load  their  memory  with  infamy  which  of 
right  belongs  to  their  master.  For  the  treaty  of  Dover 
the  King  himself  is  chiefly  answerable.  He  held  con- 
ferences on  it  with  the  French  agents :  he  wrote  many 
letters  concerning  it  with  his  own  hand:  he  was  the 
person  who  first  suggested  the  most  disgraceful  articles 
which  it  contained  ;  and  he  carefully  concealed  some 
of  those  articles  from  the  majority  of  his  Cabinet. 

Few  things  in  our  history  are  more  curious  than  the 
Nature  of  ^  origin  and  growth  of  the  power  now  possessed 
Cabinet.  by  the  Cabinet.  From  an  early  period  the 
Kings  of  England  had  been  assisted  by  a  Privy  Coun- 
cil to  which  the  law  assigned  many  important  functions 
and  duties.  During  several  centuries  this  body  de- 
liberated on  the  gravest  and  most  delicate  affairs.  But 
by  degrees  its  character  changed.  It  became  too  large 
for  despatch  and  secrecy.  The  rank  of  Privy  Coun- 
cillor was  often  bestowed  as  an  honorary  distinction  on 
persons  to  whom  nothing  was  confided,  and  whose 
opinion  was  never  asked.  The  sovereign,  on  the  most 
important  occasions,  resorted  for  advice  to  a  small  knot 
of  leading  ministers.  The  advantages  and  disadvan- 
tages of  this  course  were  early  pointed  out  by  Bacon, 
with  his  usual  judgment  and  sagacity :  but  it  was  not 
till  after  the  Restoration  that  the  interior  council  began 
to  atti-act  general  notice.  During  many  years  old  fash- 
ioned politicians  continued  to  regard  the  Cabinet  as  an 
unconstitutional  and  dangerous  board.  Nevertheless, 
it  constantly  became  more  and  more  important.  It  at 
length  drew  to  itself  the  chief  executive  power,  and 
has  now  been  regarded,  during  several  generations,  as 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  233 

an  essentiiil  part  of  our  polity.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  it 
still  continues  to  be  altogether  unknown  to  the  law. 
The  names  of  the  noblemen  and  oentlemen  who  com- 
pose  it  are  never  officially  announced  to  the  public. 
No  record  is  kept  of  its  meetings  and  resolutions  ;  nor 
has  its  existence  ever  been  recognised  by  any  Act  of 
Parliament. 

During  some  years  the  word  Cabal  was  popitlarly 
used  as   synonvmous  with  Cabinet.     But  it 

•^  •'        ,        .  .       .  .        The  Cabal. 

happened  by  a  whimsical  coincidence  that,  in 
1671,  the  Cabinet  consisted  of  five  persons  the  initial 
letters  of  whose  names  made  up  the  word  Cabal,  Clif- 
ford, Arlington,  Buckingham,  Ashley,  and  Lauderdale. 
These  ministers  were  therefore  emphatically  called  the 
Cabal ;  and  they  soon  made  that  appellation  so  infa- 
mous that  it  has  never  since  their  time  been  used  ex- 
cept as  a  term  of  reproach. 

Sir  Thomas  Clifford  was  a  Commissioner  of  the 
Treasury,  and  had  greatly  distinguished  himself  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Of  the  members  of  the  Cabal  he 
was  the  most  respectable.  For,  with  a  fiery  and  im- 
perious temper,  he  had  a  strong  though  a  lamentably 
perverted  sense  of  duty  and  honour. 

Henry  Bennet,  Lord  Arlington,  then  Secretary  of 
State,  had,  since  he  came  to  manhood,  resided  princi- 
pally on  the  Continent,  and  had  learned  that  cosmo- 
politan indifference  to  constitutions  and  religions  which 
is  often  observable  in  persons  whose  life  has  been  passed 
in  vagrant  diplomacy.  If  there  was  any  form  of  gov- 
ernment which  he  liked,  it  was  that  of  France.  If 
there  was  any  Chiu'ch  for  which  he  felt  a  preference,  it 
was  that  of  Rome.  He  had  some  talent  for  conversa- 
tion, and  some  talent  also  for  transacting  the  ordinary 
business  of  office.     He  had  learned,  during  a  life  passed 


234  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

in  travelling  and  negotiating,  the  art  of  accommodating 
his  language  and  deportment  to  the  society  in  which  he 
found  himself.  His  vivacity  in  the  closet  amused  the 
King :  his  gravity  in  debates  and  conferences  imposed 
on  the  public :  and  he  had  succeeded  in  attaching  to 
himself,  partly  by  services  and  partly  by  hopes,  a  con- 
siderable number  of  personal  retainers. 

Buckingham,  Ashley,  and  Lauderdale,  were  men  in 
whom  the  immorality  which  was  epidemic  among  the 
politicians  of  that  age  appeared  in  its  most  malignant 
type,  but  variously  modified  by  great  diversities  of 
temper  and  understanding.  Buckingham  was  a  sated 
man  of  pleasure,  who  had  turned  to  ambition  as  to  a 
pastime.  As  he  had  tried  to  amuse  himself  with  archi- 
tecture and  music,  with  writinjT  farces  and  with  seeking 
for  the  philosopher's  stone,  so  he  now  tried  to  amuse 
himself  with  a  secret  negotiation  and  a  Dutch  war.  He 
had  already,  rather  from  fickleness  and  love  of  novelty 
than  from  any  deep  design,  been  faithless  to  every 
party.  At  one  time  he  had  ranked  among  the  Cava- 
liers. At  another  time  warrants  had  been  out  against 
him  for  maintaining  a  treasonable  correspondence  with 
the  remains  of  the  Republican  party  in  the  city.  He 
was  now  again  a  courtier,  and  was  eager  to  win  the 
favour  of  the  King  by  services  from  which  the  most 
illustrious  of  those  who  had  fought  and  suffered  for  the 
royal  house  would  have  recoiled  with  horror. 

Ashley,  with  a  far  stronger  head,  and  with  a  far 
fiercer  and  more  earnest  ambition,  had  been  equally 
versatile.  But  Ashley's  versatility  was  the  effect,  not 
of  levity,  but  of  deliberate  selfishness.  He  had  served 
and  betrayed  a  succession  of  governments.  But  he 
had  timed  all  his  treacheries  so  well  that,  through  all 
revolutions,   his    fortunes    had  constantly  been  rising. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES    THE    SECOND.  235 

The  multitude,  struck  witli  admiration  by  a  pros})erity 
which,  while  everything  else  was  constantly  changing, 
remained  unchangeable,  attributed  to  him  a  prescience 
almost  miraculous,  and  likened  him  to  the  Hebrew- 
statesman  of  whom  it  is  written  that  his  counsel  was 
as  if  a  man  had  inquired  of  the  oi-acle  of  God. 

Lauderdale,  loud  and  coarse  both  in  mirth  and  an- 
ger, was  perhaps,  under  the  outward  show  of  boisterous 
frankness,  the  most  dishonest  man  in  the  whole  Cabal. 
He  had  made  himself  conspicuous  among  the  Scotch 
insurgents  of  1638,  by  his  zeal  for  the  Covenant.  He 
was  accused  of  having  been  deeply  concerned  in  the 
sale  of  Charles  the  First  to  the  Eniilish  Parliament, 
and  was  therefore,  in  the  estimation  of  good  Cavaliers, 
a  traitor,  if  possible,  of  a  worse  description  than  those 
who  had  sate  in  the  High  Court  of  Justice.  He  often 
talked  with  noisy  jocularity  of  the  days  when  he  was  a 
canter  and  a  rebel.  He  was  now  the  chief  instrument 
employed  by  the  court  in  the  work  of  forcing  epis- 
copacy on  his  reluctant  countrymen ;  nor  did  he  in 
that  cause  siirink  from  the  unsparing  use  of  the  sword, 
the  halter,  and  the  boot.  Yet  those  who  knew  him 
knew  that  thirty  years  had  made  no  change  in  his  real 
sentiments,  that  he  still  hated  the  memory  of  Charles 
the  First,  and  that  he  still  preferred  the  Presbyterian 
form  of  church  government  to  every  other. 

Unscrupulous  as  Buckingham,  Ashley,  and  Lauder- 
dale were,  it  was  not  thought  safe  to  entrust  to  them 
the  King's  intention  of  declaring  himself  a  Roman 
Catholic.  A  false  treaty,  in  which  the  article  concern- 
ing religion  was  omitted,  was  shoAvn  to  them.  Hk" 
names  and  seals  of  Clifford  and  Arlington  are  affixed 
to  the  gemiine  treaty.  Both  these  statesmen  had  a 
partiality  for  the  old  Church,  a  partiality  which   the 


236  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

brave  and  vehement  Cliftbrd  in  Jio  long  time  manfully 
avowed,  but  which  the  colder  and  meaner  Arlington 
concealed,  till  the  near  approach  of  death  scared  liim 
into  sincerity.  The  three  other  cabinet  ministers,  how- 
ever, were  not  men  to  be  easily  kept  in  the  dark,  and 
probably  suspected  more  than  was  distinctly  avowed  to 
them.  They  were  certainly  privy  to  all  the  political 
engagements  contracted  with  France,  and  were  not 
ashamed  to  receive  large  gratifications  from  Lewis. 

The  first  object  of  Charles  was  to  obtain  from  the 
Commons  supplies  which  might  be  employed  in  execut- 
ing the  secret  treaty.  The  Cabal,  holding  power  at  a 
time  when  our  government  was  in  a  state  of  transition, 
united  in  itself  two  different  kinds  of  vices  belono-ino; 
to  two  different  ages  and  to  two  different  systems.  As 
those  five  evil  counsellors  were  amono;  tlie  last  Eno;- 
lish  statesmen  who  seriously  thought  of  destroying  the 
Parliament,  so  they  were  the  first  English  statesmen 
who  attempted  extensively  to  corrupt  it.  We  find  in 
their  policy  at  once  the  latest  trace  of  the  Thorough 
of  Strafford,  and  the  earliest  trace  of  that  methodical 
bribery  which  was  afterwards  practised  by  Walpole. 
They  soon  perceived,  however,  that,  though  the  House 
of  Commons  was  chiefly  composed  of  Cavahers,  and 
though  places  and  French  gold  had  been  lavished  on 
the  members,  there  was  no  chance  that  even  the  least 
odious  parts  of  the  scheme  arranged  at  Dover  would 
be  supported  by  a  majority.  It  was  necessaiy  to  have 
recourse  to  fraud.  The  King  accordingly  professed 
great  zeal  for  the  principles  of  the  Triple  Alliance, 
and  pretended  that,  in  order  to  hold  the  ambition  of 
France  in  check,  it  would  be  necessary  to  augment  the 
fleet.  The  Commons  fell  into  the  snare,  and  voted  a 
grant  of  eight  hvindred  thousand  pounds.     The  Par- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  237 

liament  was  instantly  prorogued  ;  and  the  court,  thus 
emancipated  from  control,  proceeded  to  the  execution 
of  the  gTeat  design. 

The  financial  difficulties  were  serious.  A  war  with 
Holland  could  be  carried  on  only  at  enor-  shutting 
mous  cost.  The  ordmary  revenue  was  not  chequer. 
more  than  sufficient  to  support  the  government  in  time 
of  peace.  The  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds  out  of 
which  the  Commons  had  just  been  tricked  would  not 
defray  the  naval  and  military  charge  of  a  single  year 
of  hostilities.  After  the  terrible  lesson  given  by  the 
Lono;  Parliament,  even  the  Cabal  did  not  venture  to 
recommend  benevolences  or  shipmoncy.  In  this  per- 
plexity Ashley  and  CliflFord  proposed  a  flagitious  breach 
of  public  faith.  The  goldsmiths  of  London  were  then 
not  only  dealers  in  the  precious  metals,  but  also  bankers, 
and  were  in  the  habit  of  advancing  large  sums  of  money 
to  the  government.  In  return  for  these  advances  they 
received  assignments  on  the  revenue,  and  were  repaid 
with  interest  as  the  taxes  came  in.  About  thirteen 
hundred  thousand  pounds  had  been  in  this  way  en- 
trusted to  the  honour  of  the  state.  On  a  sudden  it 
was  annoiuiced  that  it  was  not  convenient  to  pay  the 
principal,  and  that  the  lenders  must  content  themselves 
with  interest.  They  were  consequently  unable  to  meet 
their  own  euiiao-ements.  The  Exchange  was  in  an 
uproar :  several  great  mercantile  houses  broke ;  and 
dismay  and  distress  spread  through  all  society.  Mean- 
while rapid  strides  were  made  towards  despotism. 
Proclamations,  dis])ensing  with  Acts  of  Parliament  or 
enjoining  what  only  Parliament  could  lawfully  enjoin, 
appeared  in  raj)id  succession.  Of  these  edicts  the 
most  important  was  the  Declaration  of  Indulgence.  By 
this  instrument  the  penal  laws  against  Roman  Cath* 


238  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  IL 

olics  were  set  aside  by  royal  autliority ;  and,  that  the 
real  object  of  the  measure  might  not  be  perceived,  the 
laws  against  Protestant  Nonconformists  were  also  sus- 
pended. 

A  few  days  after  the  appearance  of  the  Declaration 
War  with  "^  Indulgence,  Avar  was  proclaimed  against 
f^^nces,  t^ie  United  Provinces.  By  sea  the  Dutch 
exfreme"^  maintained  the  struggle  with  honour ;  but 
danger.  ^^^  ]g^j^^  thcv  wcrc  at  first  borne  down  by  ir- 

resistible  force.  A  great  Fi'ench  army  passed  the 
Rhine.  Fortress  after  fortress  opened  its  gates.  Three 
of  the  seven  provinces  of  the  federation  were  occupied 
by  the  invaders.  The  fires  of  tlie  liostile  camp  were 
seen  fi'om  the  top  of  the  Stadthouse  of  Amsterdam. 
The  Republic,  thus  fiercely  assailed  from  without,  was 
torn  at  the  same  time  b}^  internal  dissensions.  The 
government  was  in  the  hands  of  a  close  oligarchy  of 
powerful  burghers.  There  were  numerous  self-elected 
town  councils,  each  of  which  exercised,  within  its  own 
sphere,  many  of  the  rights  of  sovereignty.  These 
councils  sent  delegates  to  the  Provincial  States,  and 
the  Provincial  States  again  sent  delegates  to  the  States 
General.  A  hereditary  first  magistrate  was  no  essen- 
tial part  of  this  polity.  Nevertheless  one  family,  sin- 
gularly fertile  of  great  men,  had  gradually  obtained  a 
large  and  somewhat  indefinite  authority.  William,  first 
of  the  name,  Prince  of  Orange  Nassau,  and  Stadtholder 
of  Holland,  had  headed  the  memorable  insurrection 
against  Spain.  His  son  Maurice  had  been  Captain 
General  and  first  minister  of  the  States,  had,  by  emi- 
nent abilities  and  public  services,  and  by  some  treacher- 
ous and  cruel  actions,  raised  himself  to  almost  kingly 
power,  and  had  bequeathed  a  great  part  of  that  power 
to  his  family.     The  influence  of  the  Stadtholders  was 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND  289 

an  object  of  extreme  jealousy  to  tlie  municipal  oli- 
garchj.  But  the  army,  and  that  great  body  of  citizens 
which  was  excluded  fi'om  all  share  in  the  government, 
looked  on  tlie  Burgomasters  and  Deputies  with  a  dis- 
like resembling  the  dislike  with  which  the  legions  and 
the  common  people  of  Rome  regarded  the  Senate,  and 
were  as  zealous  for  the  House  of  Orang-e  as  the  legions 
and  the  common  people  of  Rome  for  the  House  of 
Cocsar.  The  Stadtliolder  commanded  the  forces  of  the 
commonwealth,  disposed  of  all  military  commands,  had 
a  large  share  of  the  civil  patronage,  and  was  sur- 
rounded by  ))omp  almost  regal. 

Prince  William  the  Second  had  been  strongly  op- 
posed by  the  oligarchical  party.  His  life  had  termi- 
nated in  the  year  1650,  amidst  great  civil  troubles.  He 
died  chikllcss  :  the  adherents  of  his  house  were  left  for 
a  short  time  without  a  head  ;  and  the  powers  which  he 
liad  exercised  were  divided  among  the  town  councils, 
the  Provincial  States,  and  the  States  General. 

But,  a  few  days  after  William's  death,  his  widow, 
Mary,  daughter  of  Charles  the  First,  King  of  Great 
Britain,  gave  birth  to  a  son,  destined  to  raise  the  glory 
and  authority  of  the  House  of  Nassau  to  the  highest 
point,  to  save  the  United  Provinces  from  slaverv,  to 
ciu-b  the  power  of  France,  and  to  establish  the  English 
constitution  on  a  lasting  foundation. 

This  Prince,  named  William  Henry,  was  from  his 
birth  an  object  of  serious  apprehension  to  the   wminm, 

.  prince  of 

party  now  sujireme  in  Holland,  and  of  loval  oiLn-e. 
attachment  to  the  old  friends  of  his  line.  He  enjoved 
high  consideration  as  the  possessor  of  a  splendid  for- 
tune, as  the  chief  of  one  of  the  most  ilhistrious  houses 
ill  Europe,  as  a  Ma<i;nate  of  the  (lerman  em])ire,  as 
a  prince  of  the  blood  royal   of  England,  and,  above 


240  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

all,  as  the  descendant  of  the  founders  of  Batavian  lib- 
erty. But  the  high  office  which  had  once  been  con- 
sidered as  hereditary  in  his  family,  remained  in  abey- 
ance ;  and  the  intention  of  the  aristocratical  party  was 
that  there  should  never  be  another  Stadtholder.  The 
want  of  a  first  magistrate  was,  to  a  great  extent,  sup- 
plied by  the  Grand  Pensionary  of  the  Province  of 
Holland,  John  de  Witt,  whose  abilities,  fii'mness,  and 
integrity  had  raised  him  to  unrivalled  authority  in  the 
counsels  of  the  municipal  oligarchy. 

The  French  invasion  produced  a  complete  change. 
The  suffering  and  terrified  people  raged  fiercely  against 
the  government.  In  their  madness  they  attacked  the 
bravest  captains  and  the  ablest  statesmen  of  the  dis- 
tressed commonwealth.  De  Ruyter  was  insulted  by 
the  rabble.  De  Witt  was  torn  in  pieces  before  the 
gate  of  the  palace  of  the  States  General  at  the  Hague. 
The  Prince  of  Orange,  who  had  no  share  in  the  guilt 
of  the  murder,  but  w^ho,  on  this  occasion,  as  on  another 
lamentable  occasion  twenty  years  later,  extended  to 
crimes  perpetrated  in  his  cause  an  indulgence  which 
has  left  a  stain  on  his  glory,  became  chief  of  the  gov- 
ernment without  a  rival.  Young  as  he  was,  his  ardent 
and  unconquerable  spirit,  though  disguised  by  a  cold 
and  sullen  manner,  soon  roused  the  courage  of  his  dis- 
mayed countrymen.  It  was  in  vain  that  both  his  uncle 
and  the  French  King  attempted  by  splendid  offers  to 
seduce  him  from  the  cause  of  the  repubhc.  To  the 
States  General  he  spoke  a  high  and  inspiriting  lan- 
guage. He  even  ventxired  to  suggest  a  scheme  which 
has  an  aspect  of  antique  heroism,  and  which,  if  it  had 
been  accomplished,  would  have  been  the  noblest  sub- 
ject for  epic  song  that  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  com- 
pass of  modern  history.     He   told   the   deputies  that, 


Ch.  II  1  UNDER   CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  241 

even  if  their  natal  soil  and  the  marvels  with  which 
human  industry  liad  covered  it  were  buried  under  the 
ocean,  all  was  not  lost.  The  Hollanders  might  survive 
Holland.  Liberty  and  pure  religion,  driven  by  tyrants 
and  bigots  from  Eurojie,  might  take  refuge  in  the  far- 
thest isles  of  Asia.  The  shipping  in  the  ports  of  the 
republic  would  suffice  to  carry  two  hundred  thousand 
emigrants  to  the  Indian  Archipelago.  There  the  Dutch 
commonwealth  might  commence  a  new  and  more  glo- 
rious existence,  and  might  i*ear,  under  the  Southern 
Cross,  amidst  the  sugar  canes  and  nutmeg  trees,  the 
Exchange  of  a  wealthier  Amsterdam,  and  the  schools 
of  a  more  learned  Leyden.  The  national  spirit  swelled 
and  rose  high.  The  terms  offered  by  the  allies  were 
firmly  rejected.  The  dykes  were  opened.  The  whole 
couiiti'y  was  turned  into  one  great  lake,  from  which 
the  cities,  with  their  ramparts  and  steeples,  rose  like 
islands.  The  invaders  were  forced  to  save  themselves 
from  destruction  by  a  precipitate  retreat.  Lewis,  who, 
though  he  sometimes  thought  it  necessary  to  appear  at 
the  head  of  his  troo]>s,  greatly  preferred  a  palace  to  a 
camp,  had  already  returned  to  enjoy  the  adulation  of 
poets  and  the  smiles  of  ladies  in  the  newly  planted 
alleys  of  Versailles. 

And  now  the  tide  turned  fast.  The  event  of  the 
maritime  war  had  been  doubtful :  by  land  the  United 
Provinces  had  obtained  a  respite  ;  and  a  respite,  though 
short,  was  of  infinite  importance.  Alarmed  by  the  vast 
desio;ns  of  Lewis,  both  the  branches  of  the  creat  House 
of  Austria  sprang  to  arms.  Spaiu  and  Holhmd,  divided 
by  the  memory  of  ancient  wrongs  and  humiliations, 
were  reconciled  by  the  nearness  of  the  common  danger. 
From  every  [)art  of  Germany  troo})S  poured  towards 
the  Rhine.     The  English  government  had  already  ex- 

YOL.   I.  16 


242  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cii.  IT. 

pended  all  the  funds  which  had  been  obtained  by  pil- 
laging the  public  creditor.  No  loan  could  be  expected 
from  the  City.  An  attempt  to  raise  taxes  by  the  royal 
authority  Avould  have  at  once  produced  a  rebellion  ;  and 
Lewis,  who  had  now  to  maintain  a  contest  against  half" 
Europe,  was  in  no  condition  to  furnish  the  means  of 
coercing  the  people  of  England.  It  was  necessary  to 
convoke  the  Parliament. 

In  the  spring  of  1673,  therefore,  the  Houses  reassem- 
Meetitigoftiif  ^Icd  after  a  recess  of  near  two  years.  CHUoi-d, 
ParUament.     j^^^  ^  p^^^.  ^^^^^  Lord  Treasurer,  and  Ashley, 

now  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  and  Lord  Chancellor,  were  the 
[tersons  on  whom  the  Kmg  princi])ally  relied  as  Parlia- 
iiivMitary  managers.  The  Country  Pai'ty  instantly  began 
to  attack  the  policy  of  the  Cabal.  Tlie  attack  was  made, 
not  in  the  way  of  storm,  but  by  slow  and  scientific 
approaches.  The  Commons  at  first  held  out  hopes 
tliat  they  would  give  support  to  the  King's  foreign 
policy,  but  insisted  that  he  should  purchase  that  sup- 
port by  abandoning  his  whole  system  of  domestic  policy. 
Declaration  Their  chiefobjcct  was  to  obtain  the  revocation 
of  iuduigence.  ^f  ^jj^  Declaration  of  Indulgence.  .  Of  all  the 
many  unpopular  steps  taken  by  the  government  the 
most  unpopular  was  the  publishing  of  this  Declaration. 
The  most  opposite  sentiments  had  been  shocked  by  an 
act  so  liberal,  done  in  a  manner  so  despotic.  All  the 
enemies  of  religious  freedom,  and  all  the  friends  of  civil 
freedom,  found  themselves  on  the  same  side  ;  and  these 
two  classes  made  up  nineteen  twentieths  of  the  nation. 
The  zealous  Churchman  exclaimed  against  the  favour 
which  had  been  shown  both  to  the  Papist  and  to  the 
Puritan.  The  Puritan,  though  he  might  rejoice  in  the 
suspension  of  the  persecution  by  which  he  had  been 
harassed,  felt  little  gi'atitude  for  a  toleration  which  he 


Ch.  n.]  UNDER  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  243 

was  to  share  with  Antichrist.  And  all  Englishmen  who 
valued  liberty  and  law,  saw  with  uneasiness  the  deep 
inroad  which  the  prerogative  had  made  into  the  prov- 
ince of  the  legislature. 

It  must  in  candour  be  admitted  that  the  constitu- 
tional question  was  then  not  quite  free  from  obscurity. 
Our  ancient  Kings  had  undoubtedly  claimed  and  ex- 
ercised the  right  of  suspending  the  operation  of  penal 
laws.  The  tribunals  had  recognised  that  right.  Par- 
liaments  had  suffered  it  to  pass  unchallenged.  That 
some  such  right  was  inherent  in  the  crown,  few  even  of 
the  Country  Party  ventured,  in  the  face  of  precedent 
and  authority,  to  deny.  Yet  it  was  clear  that,  if  this 
prerogative  were  without  limit,  the  English  govern- 
ment could  scarcely  be  distinguished  from  a  pure  des- 
potism. That  there  was  a  limit  was  fully  admitted  by 
the  King  and  his  ministers.  Whether  the  Declaration 
of  Indulgence  lay  within  or  without  the  limit  was  the 
question ;  and  neither  party  could  succeed  in  tracing 
any  line  which  would  bear  examination.  Some  oppo- 
nents of  the  government  complained  that  the  Declara- 
tion sus])ended  not  less  than  forty  statutes.  But  why 
not  forty  as  well  as  one  ?  There  was  an  orator  who 
gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  King  might  constitution- 
ally dispense  with  bad  laws,  but  not  with  good  laws. 
The  absurdity  of  such  a  distinction  it  is  needless  to 
expose.  The  doctrine  which  seems  to  have  been  gen- 
erally received  in  the  House  of  Commons  was,  that  the 
tlispensing  power  was  confined  to  secular  matters,  and 
did  not  extend  to  laws  enacted  for  the  security  of  the 
established  religion.  Yet,  as  the  King  Avas  supreme 
head  of  the  Church,  it  should  seem  that,  if  he  possessed 
the  dispensing  power  at  all,  lie  might  well  i)Ossess  that 
power  where  the  Church  was  concerned.     When  the 


244  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

courtiers  on  the  other  side  attempted  to  point  out  the 
bounds  of  this  prerogative,  they  were  not  more  success- 
ful than  the  opposition  had  been.^ 

The  truth  is  that  the  dispensing  power  was  a  great 
anomaly  in  politics.  It  was  utterly  inconsistent  in 
theory  with  the  principles  of  mixed  government :  but 
it  had  grown  up  in  times  when  people  troubled  them- 
selves little  about  theories.  It  had  not  been  veiy 
grossly  abused  in  practice.  It  had  therefore  been  tol- 
erated, and  had  gradually  acquired  a  kind  of  prescrip- 
tion. At  length  it  was  employed,  after  a  long  interval, 
in  an  enlightened  age,  and  at  an  important  conjuncture, 
to  an  extent  never  before  known,  and  for  a  pui-pose  gen- 
erally abhorred.  It  was  instantly  subjected  to  a  severe 
scrutiny.  Men  did  not,  indeed,  at  first,  venture  to  pro- 
nounce it  altogether  unconstitutional.  But  they  began 
to  perceive  that  it  was  at  direct  variance  with  the  spirit 
of  the  constitution,  and  would,  if  left  unchecked,  turn 
the  English  government  from  a  limited  into  an  absolute 
monarchy. 

Under  the  influence  of  such  apprehensions,  the  Com- 
itiscan-  mons  denied  the  King's  right  to  dispense,  not 
the*re'st  A^t  hideed  with  all  penal  statutes,  but  with  penal 
passed.  statutes  in  matters  ecclesiastical,  and  gave  him 

plainly  to  understand  that,  unless  he  renounced  that 
right,  they  would  grant  no  supply  for  the  Dutch  war. 
He,  for  a  moment,  showed  some  inclination  to  put 
everything  to  hazard  :  but  he  was  strongly  advised  by 
Lewis  to  submit  to  necessity,  and  to  wait  for  better 
times,  when  the  Fi-ench  armies,  now  employed  in  an 
arduous  struggle  on  the  continent,  might  be  available 

1  The  most  sensible  thing  said  in  the  House  of  Commons,  on  this  sub- 
ject, came  from  Sir  William  Coventry:  —  "  Our  ancestors  never  did  draw 
a  line  to  circumscribe  prerogative  and  libertj'." 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER  CHARLES  THE  SECOND.  245 

for  the  purpose  of  suppressing  discontent  in  England. 
In  the  Cabal  itself  the  signs  of  disunion  and  treachery 
began  to  appear.  Shaftesbury,  with  his  proverbial 
sagacity,  saw  that  a  violent  reaction  was  at  hand,  and 
that  all  things  were  tendino;  towards  a  crisis  resembling 
that  of  1640.  He  was  determined  that  such  a  crisis 
sliouH  not  find  him  in  the  situation  of  Strafford.  He 
therefore  turned  suddenly  round,  and  acknowledged,  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  that  the  Declaration  was  illegal. 
The  King,  thus  deserted  by  his  ally  and  by  his  Chan- 
cellor, yielded,  cancelled  the  Declaration,  and  solemnly 
promised  that  it  should  never  be  drawn  into  precedent. 
Even  this  concession  was  insufficient.  The  Commons, 
not  content  with  having  forced  their  sovereimi  to  annul 
the  Indulo;ence,  next  extorted  his  unwillincr  assent  to 
a  celebrated  law,  which  continued  in  force  down  to  the 
reign  of  George  the  Fourth.  This  law,  known  as  the 
Test  Act,  provided  that  all  persons  holding  any  office, 
civil  or  military,  should  take  the  oath  of  supremacy, 
should  subscribe  a  declaration  against  transubstantia- 
tion,  and  should  publicly  receive  the  sacrament  according 
to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  England.  The  preamble 
expressed  hostility  only  to  the  Papists  :  but  the  enact- 
ing clauses  were  scarcely  more  unfavourable  to  the 
Papists  than  to  the  rigid  Puritans.  The  Puritans, 
however,  terrified  at  the  evident  leaning  of  the  court 
towards  Poj)erv,  and  encouraged  bv  some  churchmen 
to  hope  that,  as  soon  as  the  Rouian  Catholics  siioidd 
liave  been  etfectually  disarmed,  relief  would  be  extended 
to  Protestant  Nonconformists,  made  little  opposition  ; 
nor  could  the  King,  who  was  in  extreme  want  of 
money,  venture  to  withhold  his  sanction.  The  act 
was  passed;  and  the  Duke  of  York  was  consequently 
iiiulcr  the  necessity  of  resigning  the  great  place  of 
Lord  High  Admiral. 


246  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

Hitherto  the  Comm«jiis  had  not  declared  against  the 
The  Cabal  Dutch  War.  But,  when  the  King  had,  in  re- 
(iissoived.  tum  for  Hioney  cautiously  doled  out,  relin- 
quished his  whole  plan  of  domestic  policy,  they  fell 
impetuously  on  his  foreign  policy.  They  requested  him 
to  dismiss  Buckingham  and  Lauderdale  from  his  coun- 
cils for  ever,  and  appointed  a  committee  to  consider  the 
propriety  of  impeachhig  Arlington.  In  a  short  time  the 
Cabal  was  no  more.  Cliiford,  who,  alone  of  the  five, 
had  any  claim  to  be  regarded  as  an  honest  man,  refused 
to  take  the  new  test,  laid  down  his  white  staff,  and  i-e- 
tired  to  his  country  seat.  Arlington  quitted  the  post  of 
Secretary  of  State  for  a  quiet  and  dignified  employment 
in  the  royal  household.  Shaftesbury  and  Buckingham 
made  their  peace  with  the  opposition,  and  appeared  at 
the  head  of  the  stormy  democracy  of  the  city.  Lauder- 
dale, however,  still  continued  to  be  minister  for  Scotch 
affairs,  with  which  the  English  Parliament  could  not 
interfere. 

And  now  the  Commons  urged  the  Kino-  to  make 
peace  with  Holland,  and  expressly  declared  that  no 
more  supplies  should  be  granted  for  the  war,  unless  it 
should  appear  that  the  enemy  obstinately  refused  to 
consent  to  reasonable  terms.  Charles  found  it  neces- 
sary to  postpone  to  a  more  convenient  season  all 
thought  of  executing  the  treaty  of  Dover,  and  to  cajole 
the  nation  by  pretending  to  retui^n  to  the  policy  of  the 
Triple  Alliance.  Temple,  who,  during  the  ascendency 
of  the  Cabal,  had  lived  in  seclusion  among  his  books 
and  flower  beds,  was  called  forth  from  his  hermitage. 
Peace  with     By  his  instrumentality  a  separate  peace  was 

the  United  "iii  •  i        -i  tt'Iti  •  J 

Provinces  coucluded  With  the  United  rrovinces ;  and 
he  again  became  ambassador  at  the  Hague,  where  his 
presence  was  regarded  as  a  sure  pledge  for  the  sincerity 
of  his  court. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  247 

The  chief  direction  of  affairs  was  now  entrusted  to 
Sir  Thomas  Osborn,  a  Yorkshire  baronet,  who   Administra- 

.       tiou  of  Dan 

had,  in  the   House  of  Commons,  sliown  emi-   by. 
nent  talents  for  business  and  debate.     Osborn  became 
Lord  Treasui'er,  and  was  soon  created  Earl  of  Danby. 
He  was  not  a  man  whose  character,  if  tried  by  any  high 
standard  of  morality,  would  appear  to  merit  a])probation. 
He  was  ereedv  of  wealth  and  honours,  corrui)t  himself, 
and  a  corrupter  of  others.     The  Cabal  had  bequeathed 
to  him  the  art  of  bribing  Parliaments,  an  art  still  rude, 
and  giving  little  promise  of  the  rare  perfection  to  which 
it  was  brought  in  the  following  century.      He  improved 
o-reatly  on  the  plan  of  the  first  inventors.     They  had 
merely  purchased  orators  :   but  every  man  who  had  a 
vote,  might  sell  himself  to  Danby.     Yet  the  new  min=- 
ister  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  negotiators  of 
Dover.     He  was  not  without  the  feelings  of  an  English- 
man and  a  Protestant ;  nor  did  he,  in  his  solicitude  for 
liis  own  interests,  ever  wholly  forget  the  interests  of  his 
country  and  of  his  religion.     He  was  desirous,  indeed, 
to  exalt  the  prerogative  :  but  the  means  by  which  he 
proposed  to  exalt  it  were  widely  different  from  those 
which  had  been  contemplated  by  Arlington  and  Clif- 
ford.    The  thought  of  estabhshing  arbitrary  power,  by 
callino-  in  the  aid  of  foreign  arms,  and  by  reducing  the 
kingdom  to  the  rank  of  a  dependent  principality,  never 
entered  into  his  mind.     His  j)lan  was  to  rally  round  the 
monarchy  those  classes  which  had  been  the  firm  allies 
of  the  monarchy  during  the  troubles  of  the  preceding 
o-eneration,  and  which  had  been  disgusted  by  the  recent 
crimes  and  errors  of  the  court.     With  the  help  of  the 
old  Cavalier  interest,  of  the  nobles,  of  the  country  gen- 
tlemen, of  the  clergy,  and  of  the  Universities,  it  might, 
he  conceived,  be  })ossible  to  make  Charles,  not  indeed 


248  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

an  absolute  sovereign,  but  a  sovereign  scai-cely  less 
powerful  than  Elizabeth  had  been. 

Prompted  by  these  feelings,  Danby  formed  the  design 
of  securing  to  the  Cavalier  party  the  exclusive  possession 
of  all  political  power,  both  executive  and  legislative. 
In  the  year  1675,  accordingly,  a  bill  was  offered  to  the 
Lords  which  provided  that  no  person  should  hold  any 
office,  or  should  sit  in  either  House  of  Parliament,  with- 
out first  declarincp  on  oath  that  he  considered  resistance 
to  the  kingly  power  as  in  all  cases  criminal,  and  that  he 
would  never  endeavour  to  alter  the  government  either 
in  Church  or  State.  During  several  weeks  the  debates, 
divisions,  and  protests  caused  by  this  proposition  kept 
the  country  in  a  state  of  excitement.  The  opposition 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  headed  by  two  members  of  the 
Cabal  who  were  desirous  to  make  their  peace  with  the 
nation,  Buckingham  and  Shaftesbury,  was  beyond  all 
precedent  vehement  and  pertinacious,  and  at  length 
proved  successful.  The  bill  was  not  indeed  rejected, 
but  was  retarded,  mutilated,  and  at  length  suffered  to 
drop. 

So  arbitrary  and  so  exclusive  was  Danby's  scheme  of 
domestic  policy.  His  opinions  touching  foreign  policy 
did  him  more  honour.  They  were  in  truth  directly 
opposed  to  those  of  the  Cabal,  and  differed  little  from 
those  of  the  Country  Party.  He  bitterly  lamented  the 
degraded  situation  to  which  Eno-land  was  reduced,  and 
declared,  with  more  energy  than  politeness,  that  his 
dearest  wish  was  to  cudgel  the  French  into  a  proper 
respect  for  her.  So  little  did  he  disguise  his  feelings, 
that,  at  a  great  banquet  where  the  most  illustrious 
dignitai'ies  of  the  State  and  of  the  Church  were  assem- 
oled,  he  not  very  decorously  filled  his  glass  to  the  con- 
fusion of  all  who  were  against  a  war  with  France.    He 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  249 

would  indeed  most  gladly  have  seen  his  comitiy  united 
with  the  powers  which  were  then  combined  against 
Lewis,  and  was  for  that  end  bent  on  placing  Temi)le, 
the  author  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  at  the  head  of  the 
department  which  directed  foreign  affairs.  But  the 
power  of  the  jn-ime  minister  was  limited.  In  his  most 
confidential  letters  he  complained  that  the  infatuation 
of  his  master  prevented  England  from  taking  her  proper 
place  among  European  nations.  Charles  was  insatiably 
greedy  of  French  gold :  he  had  by  no  means  relin- 
quished the  hope  that  he  might,  at  some  future  day,  be 
able  to  establish  absolute  monarchy  by  the  help  of  the 
French  arms  ;  and  for  both  reasons  he  wished  to  main- 
tain a  good  understanding  with  the  Court  of  Versailles. 
Thus  the  sovereign  leaned  towards  one  system  of 
foreign  politics,  and  the  minister  towards  a  system  dia- 
metrically opposite.  Neither  the  sovereign  nor  the 
minister,  indeed,  was  of  a  temper  to  j)ursue  any  object 
with  undeviating  constancy.  Each  occasionally  yielded 
to  the  importunity  of  the  other  ;  and  their  jarring  in- 
clinations and  mutual  concessions  cave  to  the  Avhole 
administration  a  strangely  capricious  character.  Chailes 
sometimes,  from  levity  and  indolence,  sufi'ered  Dan  by 
to  take  steps  which  Lewis  resented  as  mortal  injuries. 
Danby,  on  the  other  hand,  rather  than  relinquish  his 
great  place,  sometimes  stooped  to  com])liances  which 
caused  him  bitter  pain  and  shame.  The  King  was 
brought  to  consent  to  a  marriage  between  the  Lady 
Mary,  eldest  daughter  and  presum])tive  heiress  of  the 
Duke  of  York,  and  William  of  Orange,  the  deadly 
enemy  of  France,  and  the  hereditary  cham])ion  of  the 
Relbrmation.  Nay,  the  brave  Earl  of  Ossory,  son  of 
Onnond,  was  sent  to  assist  the  Dutch  with  some  British 
troops,  who,  on  the  most  bloody  day  of  the  whole  war, 


250  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

signally  vincUcated  the  national  reputation  for  stubborn 
courage.  The  Treasurer,  on  the  other  hand,  was  in- 
duced, not  only  to  connive  at  some  scandalous  pecuni- 
ary transactions  which  took  place  between  his  master 
and  the  court  of  Versailles,  but  to  become,  unwillingly 
indeed  and  ungraciously,  an  agent  in  those  transactions. 
Meanwhile,  the  Country  Party  was  driven  by  two 
Embarrass-  stroug  feelings  in  two  opposite  directions. 
o""the  coun^  The  popular  leaders  Avere  afraid  of  the  great- 
try  Party.  j^^^g  ^^  Lcwis,  wlio  was  uot  Only  making  head 
against  the  whole  strength  of  the  continental  alliance, 
but  was  even  gaining  ground.  Yet  they  were  afraid 
to  entrust  their  own  King  with  the  means  of  curbing 
France,  lest  those  means  should  be  used  to  destroy  the 
liberties  of  England.  The  conflict  between  these  ap- 
prehensions, bofli  of  which  were  perfectly  legitimate, 
made  the  policy  of  the  Opposition  seem  as  eccentric  and 
fickle  as  that  of  the  Court.  The  Commons  called  for 
a  war  with  France,  till  the  King,  pressed  by  Danby  to 
comply  with  their  wish,  seemed  disposed  to  yield,  and 
began  to  raise  an  army.  But,  as  soon  as  they  saw  that 
the  recruiting  had  commenced,  their  dread  of  Lewis 
gave  place  to  a  nearer  dread.  They  began  to  fear  that 
the  new  levies  might  be  employed  on  a  service  in  which 
Charles  took  much  more  interest  than  in  the  defence 
of  Flanders.  They  therefore  reftised  supplies,  and 
clamoured  for  disbanding  as  loudly  as  they  had  just 
before  clamoured  for  arming.  Those  historians  who 
have  severely  reprehended  this  inconsistency  do  not 
appear  to  have  made  sufficient  allowance  for  the  em- 
barx'assing  situation  of  subjects  who  have  reason  to 
believe  that  their  prince  is  conspiring  with  a  foreign 
and  hostile  power  against  their  liberties.  To  refuse 
him  military  resources  is  to  leave  the  state  defenceless. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  251 

Yet  to  give  liim  militaiy  resources  may  be  only  to  arm 
him  against  the  state.  In  such  circumstances  vacil- 
lation cannot  be  considered  as  a  proof  of  dishonesty  or 
even  of  weakness. 

These  jealousies  were  studiously  fomented  by  the 
French  King.     He   had  lono;  kept  En<>;land   Dealings  of 
passive   by  promismg  to   support  the  throne  with  uie 

i  ii'     n      !•  ,        TT  1  1  French  em- 

agamst  tlie  rarliament.  He  now,  alarmed  at  bassy. 
finding  that  the  })atriotic  counsels  of  Danby  seemed 
likely  to  prevail  in  the  closet,  began  to  inflame  the  Par- 
liament against  the  throne.  Between  Lewis  and  the 
Country  Party  there  was  one  thing,  and  one  only, 
in  common,  j)rofound  distrust  of  Charles.  Could  the 
Country  Party  have  been  certain  that  their  sovereign 
meant  only  to  make  war  on  France,  they  would  have 
been  eager  to  support  him.  Could  Lewis  have  been 
certain  that  the  new  levies  were  intended  oidy  to  make 
war  on  the  constitution  of  England,  he  would  have 
made  no  attempt  to  stop  them.  But  the  unsteadiness 
and  faithlessness  of  Charles  were  such  that  the  French 
government  and  the  English  opposition,  agreeing  in 
nothing  else,  agreed  in  disbelieving  his  protestations, 
and  were  equally  desirous  to  keep  him  poor  and  with- 
out an  army.  Communications  were  opened  between 
Barillon,  the  Ambassador  of  Lewis,  and  those  English 
politicians  who  had  always  professed,  and  who  indeed 
sincerely  felt,  the  greatest  dread  and  dislike  of  the 
French  ascendency.  The  most  upright  member  of  the 
Country  Party,  ^ViIliam  Lord  Russell,  son  of  the  Earl 
of  Bedford,  did  not  scrui)le  to  concert  with  a  forcMon 
mission  schemes  for  embarrassing  his  own  sovereio-n. 
Tiiis  was  the  whole  extent  of  Russell's  offence.  His 
principles  and  his  fortune  alike  raised  him  above  all 
temptations  of  a  sordid  kind  :   but  there  is  too  much 


252  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

reason  to  believe  that  some  of  his  associates  were  less 
scrupulous.  It  would  be  unjust  to  impute  to  them  the 
extreme  wickedness  of  taking  bribes  to  injure  their 
coimtry.  On  the  contrary,  they  meant  to  serve  her : 
but  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  they  were  mean  and 
indelicate  enough  to  let  a  foreign  prince  pay  them  for 
serving  her.  Among  those  who  cannot  be  acquitted 
of  this  degrading  charge  was  one  man  who  is  popularly 
considered  as  the  personification  of  public  spirit,  and 
who,  in  spite  of  some  great  moral  and  intellectual  faults, 
has  a  just  claim  to  be  called  a  hero,  a  philosopher,  and 
a  patriot.  It  is  impossible  to  see  without  pain  such  a 
name  in  the  list  of  the  pensioners  of  France.  Yet  it  is 
some  consolation  to  reflect  that,  in  our  time,  a  public 
man  would  be  thought  lost  to  all  sense  of  duty  and 
of  shame,  who  should  not  spurn  from  him  a  temptation 
which  conquered  the  virtue  and  the  pride  of  Algernon 
Sidney. 

The  effect  of  these  intrigues  was  that  England,  though 
Peace  of  she  occasioually  took  a  menacing  attitude,  re- 
Nimeguen.  j^aiued  inactive  till  the  continental  war,  hav- 
ing lasted  near  seven  years,  was  terminated,  in  1678, 
by  the  treaty  of  Nimeguen.  The  United  Provinces, 
which  in  1672  had  seemed  to  be  on  the  verge  of  utter 
ruin,  obtained  honourable  and  advantageous  terms. 
This  naiTow  escape  was  generally  ascribed  to  the  abil- 
ity and  courage  of  the  young  Stadtholder.  His  fame 
was  great  throughout  Europe,  and  especially  among  the 
liinglish,  who  regarded  him  as  one  of  their  own  princes, 
and  rejoiced  to  see  him  the  husband  of  their  future 
Queen,  France  retained  many  important  towns  in 
the  Low  Countries  and  the  great  province  of  Franche 
Comt6.  Almost  the  whole  loss  was  borne  by  the  de- 
caying monarchy  of  Spain. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  253 

A  few  months  after  the  termination  of  hostilities  on 
the  continent  came  a  great  crisis  in  Enolish   violent  dis- 

~  .    .         ,   .  T       1     contents  in 

politics.  Towards  such  a  crisis  tlnngs  had  Eu-'aua. 
been  tendins:  during;  eiohteen  years.  The  whole  stock 
of  popularity,  great  as  it  was,  with  which  the  King  had 
commenced  his  administration,  had  long  been  expended. 
To  loyal  enthusiasm  had  succeeded  profound  disaftection. 
The  public  mind  had  now  measured  back  again  the 
space  over  which  it  had  passed  between  1640  and  1660, 
and  was  once  more  in  the  state  in  which  it  had  been 
when  the  Long  Parliament  met. 

The  prevailing  discontent  was  compounded  of  many 
feelings.  One  of  these  was  wounded  national  pride. 
That  generation  had  seen  England,  during  a  few  years, 
allied  on  equal  terms  with  France,  victorious  over  Hol- 
land and  Spain,  the  mistress  of  the  sea,  the  terror  of 
Rome,  the  head  of  the  Protestant  interest.  Her  re- 
sources had  not  diminished  ;  and  it  might  have  been 
expected  that  she  would  have  been  at  least  as  highly 
considered  in  Europe  under  a  legitimate  King,  strong 
in  the  affection  and  willing  obedience  of  his  subjects,  as 
she  had  been  under  an  usurper  Avhose  utmost  vigilance 
and  energy  were  required  to  keep  down  a  mutinous 
people.  Yet  she  had,  in  consequence  of  the  imbecility 
and  meanness  of  her  rulers,  sunk  so  low  that  any  Ger- 
man or  Italian  ])rincipality  which  bnmght  five  thousand 
men  into  the  field  was  a  more  important  member  of  the 
commonwealth  of  nations. 

With  the  sense  of  national  humiliation  was  mingled 
anxiety  for  civil  liberty,  Rmnours,  indistinct  indeed, 
but  perhaps  the  more  alarming  by  reason  of  their  in- 
distinctness, ini])uted  to  the  court  a  deliberate  design 
against  all  the  constitutional  rights  of  Englishmen.  It 
had  even  been  whispered  that  this  design  was  to  be 


254  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

carried  into  efFuct  by  the  intervention  of  foreign  arms. 
The  thought  of  sue]  i  intervention  made  t]ie  blood,  even 
of  the  Cavaliers,  boil  in  their  veins.  Some  who  had 
always  professed  the  doctrine  of  nonresistance  in  its  fiill 
extent  were  now  heard  to  mutter  that  there  was  one 
limitation  to  that  doctrine.  If  a  foreign  force  were 
brought  over  to  coerce  the  nation,  they  would  not  an- 
swer for  their  own  patience. 

But  neither  national  pride  nor  anxiety  for  public 
liberty  had  so  great  an  influence  on  the  popular  mind 
as  hatred  of  the  Roman  Catholic  religion.  That  hatred 
had  become  one  of  the  ruling  passions  of  the  com- 
munity, and  was  as  strong  in  the  ignorant  and  profane 
as  in  those  who  were  Protestants  from  conviction. 
The  cruelties  of  Mary's  reign,  cruelties  which  even  in 
the  most  accurate  and  sober  narrative  excite  just  detes- 
tation, and  which  were  neither  accurately  nor  soberly 
related  in  the  popular  martyrologies,  the  conspiracies 
against  Elizabeth,  and  above  all  the  Gunpowder  Plot, 
had  left  in  the  minds  of  the  vulgar  a  deep  and  bitter 
feeling  which  was  kept  up  by  annual  commemorations, 
prayers,  bonfires,  and  processions.  It  should  be  added 
that  those  classes  which  were  peculiarly  distinguished 
by  attachment  to  the  throne,  the  clei'gy  and  the  landed 
gentry,  had  peculiar  reasons  for  regarding  the  Church 
of  Rome  with  aversion.  The  clergy  trembled  for  their 
benefices  ;  the  landed  gentry  for  their  abbe;ys  and  great 
tithes.  While  the  memor}^  of  the  reign  of  the  Saints 
was  still  recent,  hatred  of  Popery  had  in  some  degree 
given  place  to  hatred  of  Puritanism  :  but,  during  the 
eighteen  years  which  had  elapsed  since  the  Restoration, 
the  hatred  of  Puritanism  had  abated,  and  the  hatred  of 
Popery  had  increased.  The  stipulations  of  the  treaty 
of  Dover  were  accurately  known    to  very  few  :   but 


Ch.  Il.J  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  255 

some  hints  had  got  abroad.  The  general  impression 
was  tliat  a  great  blow  was  about  to  be  aimed  at  the 
Protestant  religion.  The  king  was  suspected  by  many 
of  a  leaning  towards  Rome.  His  brother  and  heir 
presumptive  was  known  to  be  a  bigoted  Roman  Cath- 
olic. The  first  Duchess  of  York  had  died  a  Roman 
Catholic.  James  had  then,  in  defiance  of  the  remon- 
strances of  the  House  of  Commons,  taken  to  wife  the 
Princess  Mary  of  Modena,  another  Roman  Catholic. 
If  there  should  be  sons  by  this  marriage,  there  was 
reason  to  fear  that  they  might  be  bred  Roman  Cath- 
olics, and  that  a  long  succession  of  princes,  hostile  to 
the  established  faith,  might  sit  on  the  English  throne. 
The  constitution  had  recently  been  violated  for  the 
purpose  of  protecting  the  Roman  Catholics  from  the 
penal  laws.  The  allv  by  whom  the  policv  of  Eno-land 
had,  during  many  years,  been  chiefly  go\erned  was  not 
only  a  Roman  Catholic,  but  a  persecutor  of  the  re- 
formed Churclies.  Under  such  circumstances  it  is  not 
strange  that  the  common  people  should  have  been  in- 
clined to  api)reheiid  a  return  of  the  times  of  her  whom 
tliey  called  Bloody  Mary. 

Thus  the  nation  was  in  such  a  temper  that  the 
smallest  spark  might  raise  a  flame.  At  this  conjuncture 
fire  was  set  in  two  places  at  once  to  the  vast  mass  of 
comlustible  matter;  and  in  a  moment  the  whole  was 
in  a  blaze. 

The  French  court,  which  knew  Danby  to  be  its 
mortal  enemy,  artfully  contrived  to  ruin  him  paii  of  Dan- 
by making  him  ))ass  for  its  friend.  Lewis,  ''^■• 
by  the  instrumenrality  of  Ral])li  Montague,  a  faithless 
and  shameless  man  who  had  resided  in  France  as  min- 
ister from  England,  laid  before  tlu;  House  of  Commons 
proofs  that  the   Treasurer  had  been  concerned  in  an 


256  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  ICh.  II. 

application  made  by  the  court  of  Whitehall  to  the  court 
of  Versailles  for  a  sum  of  money.  This  discovery 
produced  its  natural  effect.  The  Treasurer  was,  in 
truth,  exposed  to  the  vengeance  of  Parliament,  not  on 
account  of  his  delinquencies,  but  on  account  of  his 
merits ;  not  because  he  had  been  an  accomplice  in  a 
criminal  transaction,  but  because  he  had  been  a  most 
unwilling  and  unserviceable  accomplice.  But  of  the 
circumstances,  which  have,  in  the  judgment  of  pos- 
terity, greatly  extenuated  his  fault,  his  contemporaries 
were  ignorant.  In  their  view  he  was  the  broker  who 
had  sold  England  to  France.  It  seemed  clear  that  his 
greatness  was  at  an  end,  and  doubtful  whether  his  head 
could  be  saved. 

Yet  was  the  ferment  excited  by  this  discovery  slight, 
The  Popish  whcu  Compared  with  the  commotion  which 
P^°''  arose  when  it  Avas  noised  abroad  that  a  great 

Popish  plot  had  been  detected.  One  Titus  Oates,  a 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  had,  by  his  dis- 
orderly life  and  heterodox  doctrine,  drawn  on  himself 
the  censure  of  his  spiritual  superiors,  had  been  com- 
pelled to  quit  his  benefice,  and  had  ever  since  led  an 
infamous  and  vagrant  life.  He  had  once  professed 
himself  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  had  passed  some  time 
on  the  Continent  in  English  colleges  of  the  order  of 
Jesus.  In  those  seminaries  he  had  heard  much  wild 
talk  about  the  best  means  of  brino-ing  England  back  to 
the  true  Church.  From  hints  thus  furnished  he  con- 
structed a  hideous  romance,  resemblino;  rather  the 
dream  of  a  sick  man  than  any  transaction  which  ever 
took  place  in  the  real  world.  The  Pope,  he  said,  had 
entrusted  the  government  of  England  to  the  Jesuits. 
The  Jesuits  had,  by  commissions  under  the  seal  of  their 
society,  a]>poiiited  Ron)an    Catliolie  clergymen,   n(jble- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  257 

men,  and  gentlemen,  to  jill  tlie  highest  offices  in  Church 
and  State,  The  Papists  liad  burned  down  London  once. 
They  had  tried  to  burn  it  down  again.  Tliey  were  at 
that  moment  planning  a  scheme  for  setting  fire  to  all 
the  shipping  in  the  Thames.  They  were  to  rise  at  a 
signal  and  massacre  all  their  Protestant  neiohbours.  A 
French  army  was  at  the  same  time  to  land  in  Ireland. 
All  the  leading  statesmen  and  divines  of  England  were 
to  be  murdered.  Three  or  four  schemes  had  been 
fonned  for  assassinatino;  the  Kino;.  He  was  to  be  stab- 
bed.  He  was  to  be  poisoned  in  his  medicine.  He 
was  to  be  shot  with  silver  bullets.  The  public  mind 
was  so  sore  and  excitable  that  these  lies  readily  found 
credit  with  the  vulgar ;  and  two  events  which  speedily 
took  place  led  even  some  reflecting  men  to  suspect  that 
the  tale,  though  evidently  distorted  and  exaggerated, 
mio;ht  have  some  foundation. 

Edward  Coleman,  a  very  busy,  and  not  very  honest, 
Roman  Catholic  intriguer,  had  been  among  the  persons 
accused.  Search  was  made  for  his  papers.  It  was 
found  that  he  had  just  destroyed  the  greater  part  of 
them.  But  a  few  which  had  escaped  contained  some 
passages  such  as,  to  minds  strongly  prepossessed,  mio-lit 
seem  to  confirm  the  evidence  of  Gates.  Those  pas- 
sages indeed,  when  candidly  construed,  appear  to  ex 
])ress  little  more  than  the  hopes  which  the  posture  of 
aflairs,  the  predilections  of  Charles,  the  still  stronger 
predilections  of  James,  and  the  relations  existing  be- 
tween the  French  and  English  courts,  might  naturally 
excite  in  the  mind  of  a  Roman  Catholic  strouirlv  at- 
tached  to  the  interests  of  his  Church.  But  the  country 
was  not  then  inclined  to  construe  the  letters  of  Papists 
candidly  ;  and  it  was  urged,  with  some  show  of  reason, 

that,  if  papers  which  had  been  passed  over  as  unimpor- 
VOI-.  I.  17 


258  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H. 

tant  were  filled  with  matter  so  suspicious,  some  great 
mystery  of  iniquity  must  have  been  contained  in  those 
documents,  which  had  been  carefully  committed  to  the 
flames. 

A  few  days  later  it  was  known  that  Sir  Edmonds- 
bury  Godfrey,  an  eminent  justice  of  the  peace  who  had 
taken  the  depositions  of  Oates  against  Coleman,  had 
disappeared.  Search  was  made  ;  and  Godfrey's  corpse 
was  found  in  a  field  near  London.  It  was  clear  that 
he  had  died  by  violence.  It  was  equally  clear  that  he 
had  not  been  set  upon  by  robbers.  His  fate  is  to  this 
day  a  secret.  Some  think  that  he  perished  by  his  own 
hand ;  some,  that  he  was  slain  by  a  private  enemy. 
The  most  improbable  supposition  is  that  he  was  mur- 
dered by  the  party  hostile  to  the  court,  in  order  to  give 
colour  to  the  story  of  the  plot.  The  most  probable 
supposition  seems,  on  the  Avhole,  to  be  that  some  hot- 
headed Roman  Catholic,  driven  to  frenzy  by  the  lies  of 
Oates  and  by  the  insults  of  the  multitude,  and  not 
nicely  distinguishing  between  the  perjured  accuser  and 
the  innocent  magistrate,  had  taken  a  revenge  of  which 
the  history  of  persecuted  sects  furnishes  but  too  many 
examples.  If  this  were  so,  the  assassin  must  have  after- 
wards bitterly  execrated  his  own  wickedness  and  folly. 
The  capital  and  the  whole  nation  went  mad  with  hatred 
and  fear.  The  penal  laws,  which  had  begun  to  lose 
something  of  their  edge,  were  sharpened  anew.  Every- 
where justices  were  busied  in  searching  houses  and 
seizing  papers.  All  the  gaols  were  filled  with  Papists. 
London  had  the  aspect  of  a  city  in  a  state  of  siege. 
The  trainbands  were  under  arms  all  night.  Prepara- 
tions were  made  for  barricadinfj  the  o-reat  thorouirh- 
fares.  Pati'oles  marched  up  and  down  the  streets. 
Cannon  were  planted   round   Whitehall.      No  citizen 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  259 

thouo-lit  himself  safe  unless  he  carried  under  his  coat 
a  small  flail  loaded  with  lead  to  brain  the  Popish  as- 
sassins. The  corpse  of  the  murdered  magistrate  was 
exhibited  during  several  days  to  the  gaze  of  great  mul- 
titudes, and  was  then  committed  to  the  grave  with 
strange  and  terrible  ceremonies  which  indicated  rather 
fear  and  the  thirst  of  vengeance  than  sorrow  or  relig- 
ious hope.  The  Houses  insisted  that  a  guard  should 
be  placed  in  the  vaults  over  which  they  sate,  in  order 
to  secure  them  against  a  second  Gunpowder  Plot.  All 
their  proceedings  were  of  a  ])iece  with  this  demand. 
Ever  since  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  the  oath  of  supremacy 
had  been  exacted  from  members  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Some  Roman  Catholics,  however,  had  contrived 
so  to  interpret  this  oath  that  they  could  take  it  without 
scruple.  A  more  stringent  test  was  now  added  :  every 
member  of  Parliament  was  required  to  make  tlie  Dec- 
laration against  Trausubstantiation  ;  and  thus  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Lords  were  for  the  first  time  excluded 
from  their  seats.  Strong  resolutions  were  adopted 
against  the  Queen.  The  Commons  threw  one  of  the 
Secretaries  of  State  into  px-ison  for  having  counter- 
sij^ned  connnissions  directed  to  gentlemen  who  were 
not  good  Protestants.  They  imj)eached  the  Lord 
Ti'easurer  of  high  treason.  Nay,  they  so  far  forgot 
the  doctrine  which,  while  the  memory  of  the  civil 
war  was  still  recent,  they  had  loudly  professed,  that 
they  even  attemjjted  to  wrest  the  command  of  the  mili- 
tia out  of  the  King's  hands.  To  such  a  temper  had 
eighteen  years  of  misgovernment  brought  the  most 
loyal  Parliament  that  had  ever  met  in  Eiigla)id. 

Yet  it  may  seem  strange  that,  even  in  tliat  extrem- 
ity, the  King  should  have  ventured  to  a])peal  to  the 
people  ;  for  the  people  were  more  excited  than  their 
representatives.     The  Lower  House,  discontented  as  it 


260  HISTORY    OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

was,  contained  a  larger  number  of  Cavaliers  than  were 
likely  to  find  seats  again.  But  it  was  thought  that  a 
dissolution  would  put  a  stop  to  the  prosecution  of  the 
Lord  Treasurer,  a  prosecution  which  might  probably 
bring  to  light  all  the  guilty  mysteries  of  the  French 
alliance,  and  might  thus  cause  extreme  personal  an- 
noyance and  embarrassment  to  Charles.  Accordingly, 
in  January  1679,  the  Parliament,  which  had  been  in 
existence  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  year  1661, 
was  dissolved  ;  and  writs  were  issued  for  a  general 
election. 

During  some  weeks  the  contention  over  the  whole 


o 


First  general  couutry  was  ficrcc  and  obstinate  beyond  ex- 

election  of  ,     '     _^  .  '' 

1679.  ample.     Unprecedented  sums  were  expended. 

New  tactics  were  employed.  It  was  remai'ked  by  the 
pamphleteers  of  that  time  as  something  extraordinary 
that  horses  Avere  hired  at  a  wreat  charo-e  for  the  con- 
veyance  of  electors.  The  practice  of  splitting  free- 
holds for  the  purpose  of  multijilying  votes  dates  from 
this  memorable  struggle.  Dissenting  preachers,  who 
had  long  hidden  themselves  in  quiet  nooks  from  per- 
secution, now  emerged  from  their  retreats,  and  rode 
from  village  to  village,  for  the  purpose  of  rekindling  the 
zeal  of  the  scattered  people  of  God.  The  tide  ran 
strong  against  the  government.  Most  of  the  new  mem- 
bers came  up  to  Westminster  in  a  mood  little  differing 
from  that  of  their  predecessors  who  had  sent  Strafford 
and  Laud  to  the  Tower. 

Meanwhile  the  courts  of  justice,  which  ought  to  be, 
in  the  midst  of  political  commotions,  sure  places  of 
refuge  for  the  innocent  of  every  party,  w^ere  disgraced 
by  wilder  passions  and  fouler  corruptions  than  were 
to  be  found  even  on  the  hustings.  The  tale  of  Gates, 
though  it  had  sufficed  to  convulse  the  whole  realm, 
would  not,  unless  confirmed  by  other  evidence,  suffice 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  261 

to  destroy  the  huiiiblest  of  those  whom  he  had  accuseds 
For,   by  the  old  law  of  England,   two  witnesses  are 
necessary   to  establish  a  charge  of  treason.     But  the 
success  of  the  first  impostor  produced  its  natural  con- 
sequences.    In  a  few  weeks  he  had  been  raised  from 
penury  and  obscurity  to  opulence,  to  power  which  made 
him  the  dread  of  princes  and  nobles,  and  to  notoriety 
such  as  has  for  low  and  bad  minds  all  the  attractions  of 
glory.     He  was  not  long  without  coadjutors  and  rivals. 
A  wretch  named  Carstairs,  who  had  earned  a  livelihood 
in  Scotland  by  going  disguised  to  conventicles  and  then 
informing  against  the  preachers,  led  the  way.     Bedloe, 
a   noted   swindler,  followed ;  and   soon,   from    all    the 
brothels,   gambling  houses,   and    spunging   houses    of 
London,  false  witnesses  poured  forth  to  swear  away 
the  lives  of  Roman  Catholics.     One  came  with  a  story 
about  an  army  of  thirty  thousand  men  who   were  to 
muster  in  the  disguise  of  pilgrims  at  Corunna,  and  to 
sail   thence   to   Wales.      Anotlv"  had  been  promised 
canonization  and  five  hundred  pounds  to  murder  the 
Kino-.     A  third  had  stepped  into  ar  eating  house  in 
Covent  Garden  and  had  there   heard   a  great  Roman 
Catholic  banker  vow,  in  the  hearing  of  all  the  guests 
and  drawers,  to  kill  the  heretical  tyrant.    Gates,  that  he 
might  not  be  eclipsed  by  his  imitators,  soon  added  a  largo 
supplement  to  his  original  nai'rative.     He  had  the  por- 
tentous impudence  to  affirm,  amcmg  other  things,  that 
he  had  once  stood  behind  a  door  which  was  ajar,  and 
had  there  overheard  the  Queen  declare  that  she  had 
resolved  to  mve  her  consent  to  the  assassination  of  her 
husband.     The  vulgar  believed,  and  the  highest  magis- 
trates pretended  to  believe,  even  such  fictions  as  these. 
The  chief  judges  of  the  realm  were  corrupt,  cruel,  and 
timid.     The  leaders  of  the  Country  Party  encouraged 


262  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  II. 

the  prevailing  delusion.  The  most  respectahle  among 
them,  indeed,  were  themselves  so  far  deluded  as  to  be- 
lieve the  greater  part  of  the  evidence  of  the  plot  to  be 
true.  Such  men  as  Shaftesbury  and  Buckingham  doubt- 
less perceived  that  the  whole  was  a  romance.  But  it 
was  a  romance  which  served  their  turn ;  and  to  their 
seared  consciences  the  death  of  an  innocent  man  gave 
no  more  uneasiness  than  the  death  of  a  partridge.  The 
juries  partook  of  the  feelings  then  common  throughout 
the  nation,  and  were  encouraged  by  the  bench  to  in- 
dulge those  feelings  without  restraint.  The  multitude 
applauded  Oates  and  his  confederates,  hooted  and 
pelted  the  witnesses  who  appeared  on  behalf  of  the 
accused,  and  shouted  with  joy  when  the  verdict  of 
Guilty  was  pronounced.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  suf- 
ferers appealed  to  the  respectability  of  their  past  lives : 
for  the  public  mind  was  possessed  with  a  belief  that 
the  more  conscientious  a  Papist  was,  the  more  likely 
he  must  be  to  plot  against  a  Protestant  government. 
It  was  in  vain  that,  just  before  the  cart  passed  from 
under  their  feet,  they  resolutely  affirmed  their  inno- 
cence :  for  the  general  opinion  was  that  a  good  Papist 
considered  all  lies  which  were  serviceable  to  his  Church 
as  not  only  excusable  but  meritorious. 

While  innocent  blood  was  shedcUnij;  under  the  forms 
Violence  of  of  justicc,  the  uew  Parliament  met;  and  such 
HousHf  "^'^s  the  violence  of  the  predominant  party 
Commons.  ^^^^  even  men  whose  youth  had  beeji  passed 
amidst  revolutions,  men  who  remembered  the  attainder 
of  Strafford,  the  attempt  on  the  five  members,  the  abo- 
lition of  the  House  of  Lords,  the  execution  of  the  King, 
stood  aghast  at  the  aspect  of  public  affairs.  The  im- 
peachment of  Danby  was  resumed.  He  pleaded  the 
voyal  pardon.     But  the  Commons  treated  the  plea  with 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  263 

contempt,  and  insisted  tliat  the  trial  shoiild  proceed. 
Danby,  hoM'ever,  was  not  their  chief  object.  They 
were  convinced  that  the  only  effectual  way  of  securing 
the  liberties  and  religion  of  the  nation  was  to  exclude 
the  Duke  of  York  from  the  throne. 

Tlie  King  was  in  great  perplexity.  He  had  insisted 
that  his  brotlier,  the  sight  of  whom  inflamed  the  popu- 
lace to  madness,  should  retire  for  a  time  to  Bi-ussels : 
but  this  concession  did  not  seem  to  have  produced  any 
favourable  eifect.  The  Roundhead  party  was  now  de- 
cidedly preponderant.  Towards  that  party  leaned  mill- 
ions who  had,  at  the  time  of  the  Restoration,  leaned 
towards  the  side  of  prerogative.  Of  the  old  Cavaliers 
many  participated  in  the  prcA^ailing  fear  of  Popeiy, 
and  many,  bitterly  resenting  the  ingratitude  of  the 
prince  for  whom  they  had  sacrificed  so  m.uch,  looked 
on  his  distress  as  carelessly  as  he  had  looked  on  theirs. 
Even  the  Anglican  clergy,  mortified  and  alarmed  by 
the  apostasy  of  the  Duke  of  York,  so  far  countenanced 
the  opposition  as  to  join  cordially  in  the  outcry  against 
the  Roman  Catholics. 

The  King  in  this  extremity  had  recourse  to  Sir  Wil- 
liam Temi)le.  Of  all  the  official  men  of  that  Tcmpie-a 
age  Temple  iiad  preserved  the  fairest  charac-  emmeut. 
ter.  The  Trij)le  Alliance  had  been  his  work.  He 
had  refused  to  take  any  part  in  the  ])olitics  of  the  Ca- 
bal, and  had,  while  that  administration  directed  affairs, 
lived  in  strict  privacy.  He  had  quitted  his  retreat  at 
the  call  of  Dauby,  had  made  peace  between  England 
and  Holland,  and  had  borne  a  chief  part  in  bringing 
about  the  marriage  of  the  Lady  Mar}'  to  her  cousin  the 
Prince  of  Orange.  Thus  he  had  the  credit  of  every 
one  of  the  few  good  things  wliich  had  been  done  by 
the  government  since  the  Restoration.     Of  the  numer* 


264  HISTORY   OP    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

ons  crimes  and  blunders  of  the  last  eighteen  years  none 
could  be  imputed  to  him.  His  private  life,  though  not 
austere,  was  decorous :  his  manners  were  popular  ;  and 
he  was  not  to  be  corrupted  either  by  titles  or  by  money. 
Somethino;.  however,  was  wantincr  to  the  character  of 
this  respectable  statesman.  The  temperature  of  his 
patriotism  was  lukewarm.  He  prized  his  ease  and  his 
])ersonal  dignity  too  much,  and  shrank  from  responsi- 
bility with  a  pusillanimous  fear.  Nor  indeed  had  his 
habits  fitted  him  to  bear  a  part  in  the  conflicts  of  our 
domestic  factions.  He  had  reached  his  fiftieth  year 
without  having  sate  in  the  English  Parliament ;  and 
his  official  experience  had  been  almost  entirely  acquired 
at  foreign  courts.  He  was  justly  esteemed  one  of  the 
first  diplomatists  in  Europe  :  but  the  talents  and  ac- 
complishments of  a  diplomatist  are  widely  different 
from  those  Avhich  qualify  a  politician  to  lead  the  House 
of  Commons  in  agitated  times. 

The  scheme  which  he  proposed  showed  considerable 
ingenuity.  Though  not  a  profound  philosopher,  he 
had  thought  more  than  most  busy  men  of  the  world  on 
the  general  principles  of  government ;  and  his  mind  had 
been  enlarged  by  historical  studies  and  foreign  travel. 
He  seems  to  have  discerned  more  clearly  than  most  of 
his  contemporaries  one  cause  of  the  difficulties  by  which 
the  government  was  beset.  The  character  of  the  Eng- 
lish polity  was  gradually  changing.  The  Parliament 
was  slowly,  but  constantly,  gaining  ground  on  the  pre- 
rogative. The  line  between  the  legislative  and  execu- 
tive powers  was  in  theory  as  strongly  marked  as  ever, 
but  in  practice  was  daily  becoming  fainter  and  fainter. 
The  theory  of  the  constitution  was  that  the  King  might 
name  his  own  mim'sters.  But  the  House  of  Commons 
had  driven  Clarendon,  the  Cabal,  and   Danby  succes- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  265 

sively  from  the  direction  of  affairs.  The  theory  of  th.e 
constitution  was  tliat  the  King  alone  had  the  power  of 
making  peace  and  war.  But  the  House  of  Commons 
liad  forced  him  to  make  peace  with  Holland,  and  had 
all  but  forced  him  to  make  war  M'ith  France.  The 
theory  of  the  constitution  was  that  the  King  was  the 
sole  judge  of  the  cases  in  which  it  might  be  proper  to 
pardon  offenders.  Yet  he  was  so  much  in  dread  of  the 
House  of  Commons  that,  at  that  moment,  he  could  not 
venture  to  rescue  from  the  gallows  men  whom  he  well 
knew  to  be  the  innocent  victims  of  perjuiy. 

Temple,  it  should  seem,  was  desirous  to  secure  to  the 
legislature  its  undoubted  constitutional  ])owers,  and  yet 
to  prevent  it,  if  possible,  from  encroaching  further  on 
tlie  province  of  the  executive  administration.  With 
this  view  he  determined  to  interpose  between  the  sov- 
ereign and  the  Parliament  a  body  which  might  break 
the  shock  of  their  collision.  There  was  a  body,  ancient, 
highly  honourable,  and  recognised  by  the  law,  which, 
he  thought,  might  be  so  remodelled  as  to  serve  this 
-purpose.  He  determined  to  give  to  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil a  new  character  and  office  in  the  government.  The 
number  of  Councillors  he  fixed  at  thirty.  Fifteen  of 
them  were  to  be  the  chief  ministers  of  state,  of  law, 
and  of  religion.  The  other  fifteen  were  to  be  unplaced 
noblemen  and  gentlemen  of  ample  fortune  and  high 
character.  There  was  to  be  no  interior  cabinet.  All 
the  thirty  were  to  be  entrusted  with  every  political  se- 
cret, and  summoned  to  every  meeting ;  and  the  King 
was  to  declare  that  he  would,  on  every  occasion,  be 
guided  by  their  advice. 

Temple  seems  to  have  thought  that,  by  this  contriv- 
ance, he  could  at  once  secure  the  nation  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  crown,  and  the  crown  against  the  en- 


266  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND,  I  Eh.  II. 

croachments  of  the  Parliament.  It  was,  on  one  hand, 
highly  improbable  that  schemes  such  as  had  been 
formed  by  the  Cabal  would  be  even  propounded  for 
discussion  in  an  assembly  consisting  of  thirty  eminent 
men,  fifteen  of  whom  were  bound  by  no  tie  of  interest 
to  the  court.  On  the  other  hand,  it  might  be  hoped 
that  the  Commons,  content  with  the  guarantee  against 
misgovernment  which  such  a  Privy  Council  fornished, 
would  confine  themselves  more  than  they  had  of  late 
done  to  their  strictly  legislative  functions,  and  would 
no  longer  think  it  necessary  to  pry  into  every  part  of 
the  executive  administration. 

This  plan,  though  in  some  respects  not  unworthy  of 
the  abilities  of  its  author,  was  in  principle  vicious.  The 
new  board  was  half  a  cabhiet  and  half  a  Parliament, 
and,  like  almost  every  other  contrivance,  whether  me- 
chanical or  political,  which  is  meant  to  serve  two  pur- 
poses altogether  different,  fiiiled  of  accomplishing  either. 
It  was  too  large  and  too  divided  to  be  a  good  admin- 
istrative body.  It  was  too  closely  connected  with  the 
crown  to  be  a  good  checking  body.  It  contained  just- 
enough  of  popular  ingredients  to  make  it  a  bad  council 
of  state,  unfit  for  the  keeping  of  secrets,  for  the  con- 
ducting of  delicate  negotiations,  and  for  the  adminis- 
tration of  war.  Yet  were  these  popular  ingredients 
by  no  means  sufficient  to  secure  the  nation  against 
misgovernment.  The  plan,  therefore,  even  if  it  had 
been  fairly  tried,  could  scarcely  have  'succeeded ;  and 
it  was  not  fairly  tried.  The'  King  was  fickle  and  per- 
fidious :  the  Parliament  was  excited  and  unreasonable  ; 
and  the  materials  out  of  which  the  new  Council  was 
made,  though  perhaps  the  best  which  that  age  afforded, 
were  still  bad. 

The  commencement  of  the  new  system  was,  how- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  x67 

ever,  liailed  with  general  delight ;  for  the  people  were 
in  a  temper  to  think  any  change  an  improvement. 
They  were  also  pleased  by  some  of  the  new  nomina- 
tions. Shaftesbury,  now  their  favourite,  was  appointed 
Lord  President.  Russell  and  some  other  distinguished 
members  of  the  Country  Party  were  sworn  of  the 
Council.  But  in  a  few  days  all  was  again  in  confusion. 
The  inconveniences  of  having  so  numerous  a  cabinet 
were  such  that  Temple  himself  consented  to  infringe 
one  of  the  fundamental  rules  which  he  had  laid  down, 
and  to  become  one  of  a  small  knot  which  really  di- 
rected everything.  With  him  were  joined  three  other 
ministers,  Arthur  Capel,  Earl  of  Essex,  George  Savile, 
Viscount  Halifax,  and  Robert  Spencer,  Earl  of  Sun- 
derland. 

Of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  then  First  Commissioner  of 
the  Treasury,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  he  was  a  man 
of  solid,  though  not  brilliant  parts,  and  of  grave  and 
melancholy  character,  that  he  had  been  connected 
with  the  Country  Party,  and  that  he  was  at  this  time 
honestly  desii'ous  to  effect,  on  terms  beneficial  to  the 
State,  a  rtJconciliation  between  that  party  and  the  throne. 

Among  the  statesmen  of  those  times  TTalifax  was,  in 
genius,  the  first.  His  intellect  was  fertile,  (;.i,,iracter  of 
subtle,  and  capacious.  His  polished,  lumi-  "aiuax. 
nous,  and  animated  eloquence,  set  off  by  the  silver  tones 
of  his  voice,  was  the  delight  of  the  House  of  Lords. 
His  conversation  overflowed  with  thought,  fancy,  and 
wit.  His  political  tracts  well  deserve  to  be  studied 
for  their  litei'ary  merit,  and  fully  entitle  him  to  a  place 
among  English  classics.  To  the  weight- derived  from 
talents  so  great  and  various  he  united  all  the  influ- 
ence which  belongs  to  rank  and  ample  possessions. 
Yet  he  was  less  successful  in  politics  than  many  who 


268  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

enjoyed  smaller  advantages.  Indeed,  those  intellect- 
ual peculiarities  which  make  his  writings  valuable  fre- 
quently impeded  him  in  the  contests  of  active  life. 
For  he  always  saw  passing  events,  not  in  the  point  of 
view  in  which  they  commonly  appear  to  one  who  bears 
a  part  in  them,  but  in  the  point  of  view  in  which, 
after  the  lapse  of  many  years,  they  appear  to  the  philo- 
sophic historian.  With  such  a  turn  of  mind,  he  could 
not  long  continue  to  act  cordially  with  any  body  of 
men.  All  the  prejudices,  all  the  exaggerations  of  both 
the  great  parties  in  the  State  moved  his  scorn.  He 
despised  the  mean  arts  and  unreasonable  clamours  of 
demagogues.  He  despised  still  more  the  doctrines  of 
divine  right  and  passive  obedience.  He  sneered  im- 
partially at  the  bigotry  of  the  Churchman  and  at  the 
bigotry  of  the  Puritan.  He  was  eqiially  unable  to  com- 
prehend how  any  man  should  object  to  Saints'  days  and 
surplices,  and  how  any  man  should  persecute  any  other 
man  for  objecting  to  them.  In  temper  he  was  what,  in 
our  time,  is  called  a  Conservative.  In  theory  he  was  a 
Republican.  Even  when  his  dread  of  anarchy  and  his 
disdain  for  vuloar  delusions  led  him  to  side  for  a  time 
with  the  defenders  of  arbitrary  power,  his  intellect  was 
always  with  Locke  and  Milton.  Indeed,  his  jests  upon 
hereditary  monarchy  were  sometimes  such  as  5yould 
have  better  become  a  member  of  the  Calf's  Head  Club 
than  a  Privy  Councillor  of  the  Stuarts.  In  religion  he 
was  so  far  from  being  a  zealot  that  he  was  called  by  the 
uncharitable  an  atheist :  but  this  imputation  he  vehe- 
mently repelled  ;  and  in  truth,  though  he  sometimes 
gave  scandal  by  the  way  in  which  he  exerted  liis  rare 
powers  both  of  reasoning  and  of  ridicule  on  serious 
subjects,  he  seems  to  have  been  by  no  means  unsus- 
ceptible of  religious  impressions. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  269 

He  was  the  chief  of  those  politicians  whom  the  two 
great  parties  contemptuously  called  Trimmers.  Instead 
of  quarrelling  with  this  nickname,  he  assumed  it  as  a 
title  of  honour,  and  vindicated,  with  great  vivacity,  the 
dignity  of  the  appellation.  Every  thing  good,  he  said, 
trims  between  extremes.  The  temperate  zone  trims 
between  tlie  climate  in  which  men  are  roasted  and  the 
climate  in  which  they  are  frozen.  The  English  Church 
trims  between  the  Anabaptist  madness  and  the  Papist 
lethargy.  The  English  constitution  trims  between 
Turkish  despotism  and  Polish  anarchy.  Virtue  is 
nothing  but  a  just  temper  between  propensities  any  one 
of  Avhich,  if  indulged  to  excess,  becomes  vice.  Nay, 
the  perfection  of  the  Supreme  Being  himself  consists  in 
the  exact  equilibrium  of  attributes,  none  of  which 
could  preponderate  without  disturbing  the  whole  moral 
and  physical  order  of  the  world. ^  Thus  Halifax  was 
a  Trimmer  "  on  principle.  He  was  also  a  Trimmer 
by  the  constitution  both  of  his  head  and  of  his  heart. 
His  understanding  was  keen,  sceptical,  inexhaustibly 
fertile  in  distinctions  and  objections  ;  his  taste  refined  ; 
his  sense  of  the  ludicrous  exquisite  ;  his  temper  placid 
and  forgiving,  but  fastidious,  and  by  no  means  prone 
either  to  malevolence  or  to  enthusiastic  adnn'ration. 
Such  a  man  could  not  long  be  constant  to  any  band 
of  political  allies.  He  must  not;,  however,  be  con- 
founded with  the  vuln-ar  crowd  of  renegades.  For 
though,  like  them,  he  passed  from  side  to  side,  his 
transition  was  always  in  the  dii^ction  opposite  to  theirs. 
He  had  nothing  in  common  with  those  who  fly  front 
extreme  to  extreme,  and  who  regard  the  party  which 

1  Halifax  was  undoubtedly  the  real  author  of  the  "  Character  of  a  Trim- 
mer, '  which,  for  a  time,  went  under  the  name  of  his  kinsuiau,  Sir  William 
Coventry. 


270  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

they  have  deserted  with  an  animosity  far  exceeding 
that  of  consistent  enemies.  His  place  was  on  the 
debatable  ground  between  the  hostile  divisions  of  the 
community,  and  he  never  wandered  far  beyond  the 
frontier  of  either.  The  party  to  which  he  at  any  mo- 
ment belonged  was  the  party  which,  at  that  moment, 
he  liked  least,  because  it  was  the  party  of  which  at 
that  moment  he  had  the  nearest  view.  He  was  there- 
fore always  severe  upon  his  violent  associates,  and  was 
always  in  friendly  relations  with  his  moderate  oppo- 
nents. Every  faction  in  the  day  of  its  insolent  ani^ 
vindictive  triumph  incurred  his  censure  ;  and  every 
faction,  when  vanquished  and  persecuted,  found  in  him 
a  protector.  To  his  lasting  honour  it  must  be  men- 
tioned that  he  attempted  to  save  those  victims  whose 
fate  has  left  the  deepest  stain  both  on  the  Whig  and 
on  the  Tory  name. 

He  had  greatly  distinguished  himself  ill  opposition, 
and  had  thus  drawn  on  himself  the  royal  displeasure, 
which  was  indeed  so  strong,  that  he  was  not  admitted 
into  the  Council  of  Thirty  without  much  difficulty  and 
long  altercation.  As  soon,  however,  as  he  had  obtained 
a  footing:  at  court,  the  charms  of  his  manner  and  of  his 
conversation  made  him  a  favourite.  He  was  seriously 
alarmed  by  the  violence  of  the  public  discontent.  He 
thought  that  liberty  was  for  the  present  safe,  and  that 
order  and  legitimate  authority  were  in  danger.  He 
therefore,  as  was  his  fashion,  joined  himself  to  the 
weaker  side.  Perhaps 'his  conversion  was  not  wholly 
disinterested.  For  study  and  reflection,  though  they 
had  emancipated  him  from  many  vulgar  prejudices,  had 
left  him  a  slave  to  vulgar  desires.  Money  he  did  not 
want ;  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  obtained 
it  by  any  means  which,  in  that  age,  even  severe  censors 
considered  as  dishonourable  ;  but  rank  and  power  had 


Cn.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  271 

strong  attractions  for  him.  He  pretended,  indeed,  tliat 
he  considered  titles  and  great  offices  as  baits  whicli 
could  allure  none  but  fools,  that  he  hated  business, 
pom}),  and  pageantry,  and  that  his  dearest  wish  was  to 
escape  from  the  bustle  and  glitter  of  Whitehall  to  the 
quiet  woods  which  surrounded  his  ancient  mansion  in 
Nottinohamshire:  but  his  conduct  was  not  a  little  at 
variance  with  his  professions.  In  truth  he  wished  to 
command  the  respect  at  once  of  courtiers  and  of  phi- 
losophers, to  be  admired  for  attaining  high  dignities,  and 
to  be  at  the  same  time  admired  for  despising  them. 

Sunderland  was  Secretary  of  State.     In  this  man  the 
political  immorality  of  his  age  was  personified  character  of 
in  the  most  lively  manner.     Nature  had  given  Sunderland. 
him  a  keen  understanding,  a  restless  and  mischievous 
temper,  a  cold  heart,  and  an  abject  spirit.     His  mind 
had  undergone  a  training  by  whicli  all  his  vices  had 
been  nursed  up  to  the  rankest  maturity.     At  his  en- 
trance into  public  life,  he  had  passed  several  years  in 
diplomatic  posts  abroad,   and  had  been,  during  some 
time,  mini.ster  in  France.     Every  calling  has  its  pecu- 
liar temptations.     There  is  no  injustice  h\  saying  that 
diplomatists,  as  a  class,   have  always  been  more   dis- 
tinguished  by   their  address,   by   the   art  with   which 
they  win  the  confidence  of  those  with  whom  they  have 
to  deal,  and  by  the   ease  with  which  they  catch  the 
tone  of  every  society  into  which   they  are  admitted, 
than    by   generous    enthusiasm   or   austere   rectitude ; 
and   the   relations   between    Charles   and   Lewis  were 
such  that  no  English  nobleman   could  long  reside  in 
France  as  envoy,  and  retain  any  patriotic  or  honour- 
able sentiment.     Sunderland  came  forth  from  tin-  bad 
school   in   which   he   had  been   brought    up,   cunning, 
supple,   shameless,   free  from  all  ])rejudices,  and  des- 


272  HISTORY    OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  [L 

titute  of  all  principles.     He   was,  by  liereditaiy  con- 
nection,  a   Cavalier:  but  with  the   Cavaliers   he   had 
nothing  in  common.     They  were  zealous  for  monarchy, 
and  condemned  in  theory  all  resistance.      Yet  they  had 
sturdy  English  hearts  which  would  never  have  endured 
real  despotism.     He,  on  the  contrary,  had  a  languid 
speculative  liking  for  republican  institutions,  which  was 
compatible  with  perfect  readiness  to  be  in  practice  the 
most  servile  instrument  of  arbitrary  power.     Like  many 
other  accomplished  flatterers  and  negotiators,  he  was 
far  more  skilful   in  the  art  of  reading  the  characters 
and  practising  on  the  weaknesses  of  individuals,  than  in 
the  art  of  discerning  the  feelings  of  great  masses,  and 
of  foreseeing  the  approach  of  great  revolutions.     He 
was  adroit   in   intrigue  ;    and  it  was  difBcult  even  for 
shrewd   and  experienced   men   who   had    been   amply 
forewarned  of  his  perfidy  to  withstand  the  fascination 
of  his  manner,  and  to  refuse  credit  to  his  professions  of 
attachment.     But  he  was  so  intent  on  observine:  and 
courting  particular  persons,  that  he  often  forgot  to  study 
the  temper  of  the  nation.     He  therefore  miscalculated 
grossly  with  respect  to  all  the  most  momentous  events 
of  his  time.     More  than  one  important  movement  and 
rebound  of  the  public  mind  took  liim  by  surprise  ;  and 
the  world,  unable  to  understand  how  so  clever  a  man 
could  be  blind  to  what  was  clearly  discerned  by  the 
politicians  of  the  coffee  houses,  sometimes  attributed  to 
deep  design  what  were  in  truth  mere  blunders. 

It  was  only  in  private  conference  that  his  eminent 
abilities  displayed  themselves.  In  the  royal  closet,  or 
in  a  very  small  circle,  he  exercised  great  influence. 
But  at  the  Council  board  he  was  taciturn  ;*and  in  the 
House  of  Lords  he  never  opened  his  lips. 

The  four  confidential  advisers  of  the  crown  soon  found 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  273 

that  their  position  was  embarrassing;  and  invidious.  The 
other  members  of  the  Council  murmured  at  a  distinc- 
tion inconsistent  with  the  King's  promises ;  and  some 
of  them,  witli  Shaftesbury  at  tlieir  head,  again  betook 
themselves  to  strenuous  opposition  in  Parliament.  The 
agitation,  which  had  been  suspended  by  the  late  changes, 
speedily  became  more  violent  than  ever.  It  was  in  vain 
that  Charles  offered  to  grant  to  the  Commons  any  secu- 
rity for  the  Protestant  religion  which  they  could  devise, 
provided  only  that  they  would  not  touch  the  order  of 
succession.  They  would  hear  of  no  compromise.  They 
would  have  the  Exclusion  Bill  and  nothino;  but  the  Ex- 
elusion  Bill.  The  King,  therefore,  a  few  weeks  after 
he  had  publicly  promised  to  take  no  step  without  the 
advice  of  his  new  Council,  went  down  to  the  House  of 
Lords  without  mentionino-  his  intention  in  Council,  and 
prorogued  the  Parliament. 

The   day   of  that   prorogation,  the   twenty-sixth   of 
JMav    1G79,   is  a  great    era    in   our  history.   Prorogation 

_,      "  ,  ,  1  XT    1  r^  4  of  the  I'ar- 

Jbor  on  that  day  tlie  Habeas  Corpus  Act  re-   iwmeut. 
ceived  the  royal  assent.     From  the  time  of  the  Great 
Charter,  the  substantive   law  respecting  the  personal 
liberty  of  Englishmen  had  been  nearly  the  same  as  at 
present :   but   it   had   been   inefficacious  for  want  of  a 
stringent  system  of  procedure.     What  was  needed  was 
not  a  new  right,  but  a  prompt  and  searching  remedy  ; 
and  such  a  nnnedy  the  Habeas  Corf)Us  Act   nabeM 
supplied.     The  King  would  gladly  have  re-     "^^^ 
fused  his  consent  to  that  measure  :  but  he  was  about 
to   appeal   from  his   Parliament  to   his   people  on  the 
question  of  the  succession  ;  and  he  coidd  not  venture, 
at  so  critical  a  moment,  to  reject  a  bill  which  was  in 
the  highest  degree  popidar. 

On  the  same  day,  the  press  of  England  became  for  a 
vol..  I.  18 


274  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

short  time  free.  In  old  times  printers  had  been  strictly 
controlled  by  the  Court  of  Star  Chamber.  The  Long 
Parliament  had  abolished  the  Star  Chamber,  but  had, 
in  spite  of  the  philosophical  and  eloquent  expostulation 
of  Milton,  established  and  maintained  a  censorship. 
Soon  after  the  Restoration,  an  Act  had  been  passed 
which  prohibited  the  printing  of  unlicensed  books  ;  and 
it  had  been  provided  that  this  Act  should  continue  in 
force  till  the  end  of  the  first  session  of  the  next  Par- 
liament. That  moment  had  now  arrived ;  and  the 
King,  in  the  very  act  of  dismissing  the  Houses,  eman- 
cipated the  press. 

Shortly  after  the  prorogation  came  a  dissolution 
Second  gen-    and  auothcr  genei'al  election.     The  zeal  and 

eral  election  t        p    i  •   • 

of  1679.  sti'ength  of  the  opposition  were  at  the  height. 
The  cry  for  the  Exclusion  Bill  was  louder  than  ever  ; 
and  with  this  cry  was  mingled  another  Cry,  which  fired 
the  blood  of  the  multitude,  but  which  was  heard  with 
regret  and  alarm  by  all  judicious  friends  of  freedom. 
Not  only  the  rights  of  the  Duke  of  York,  an  avowed 
Papist,  but  those  of  his  two  daughters,  sincere  and 
zealous  Protestants,  were  assailed.  It  was  confidently 
afiirmed  that  the  eldest  natural  son  of  the  Kino;  had 
been  born  in  wedlock,  and  was  lawful  heir  to  the 
crown. 

Charles,  while  a  wanderer  on  the  Continent,  had 
Popularity  of  fallen  ill  at  the  Hague  with  Lucy  Walters,  a 
Monmouth,  ^y^jg^^  gj^.j  ^f  ^^^^^  beauty,  but  of  weak  un- 
derstanding and  dissolute  manners.  She  became  his 
mistress,  and  presented  him  with  a  son.  A  suspicious 
lover  might  have  had  his  doubts  ;  for  the  lady  had  sev- 
eral admirers,  and  was  not  supposed  to  be  cruel  to  any. 
Charles,  however,  readily  took  her  word,  and  poured 
forth  on  little  James  Crofts,  as  the  boy  was  then  called, 


Ch.  II-l  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  275 

an  overflowing  fondness,  such  as  seemed  hardly  to  he- 
long  to  that  cool  and  careless  nature.  Soon  after  the 
Restoration,  the  young  favourite,  who  liad  learned  in 
France  the  exercises  then  considered  necessary  to  a 
fine  gentleman,  made  his  appearance  at  Whitehall.  He 
was  lodged  in  the  palace,  attended  by  pages,  and  per- 
mitted to  enjoy  several  distinctions  which  had  till  then 
been  confined  to  princes  of  the  blood  royal.  He  was 
married,  while  still  in  tender  youth,  to  Anne  Scott, 
heiress  of  the  noble  house  of  Buccleuch.  He  took  her 
name,  and  received  with  her  hand  possession  of  her 
ample  domains.  The  estate  which  he  had  acquired  by 
this  match  was  popularly  estimated  at  not  less  than  ten 
thousand  pounds  a  year.  Titles,  and  favours  rrtore  sub- 
stantial than  titles,  were  lavished  on  him.  He  was 
made  Duke  of  Monmouth  in  Enoland,  Duke  of  Buc- 
clench  in  Scotland,  a  Knight  of  the  Garter,  Master  of 
the  Horse,  Commander  of  the  first  troop  of  Life  Guards, 
Chief  Justice  of  Eyre  south  of  Trent,  and  Chancellor 
of  the  University  of  Cambridge.  Nor  did  he  appear  to 
the  public  unworthy  of  his  high  fortunes.  His  coun- 
tenance was  eminently  handsome  and  engaging,  his 
temper  sweet,  his  manners  polite  and  afiable.  Though 
a  libertine,  he  won  the  hearts  of  the  Puritans.  Though 
he  was  known  to  have  been  privy  to  the  shameful 
attack  on  Sir  John  Coventry,  he  easily  obtained  the 
forgiveness  of  the  Country  Party.  Even  austere  mor- 
alists owned  that,  in  such  a  court,  strict  conjugal  fidelity 
was  scarcely  to  be  expected  fx-om  one  who,  Avhile  a 
child,  had  been  married  to  another  child.  Even  ])atri- 
ots  were  willing  to  excuse  a  headstrong  boy  for  visiting 
with  innnoderate  vengeance  an  insult  offered  to  his 
fatlier.  And  soon  the  stain  left  by  loose  amours  and 
midnight  brawls   was    eflfacetl    by  honourable  exi)loits. 


276  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

When  Charles  and  LeAvis  united  their  forces  against 
Holland,  Monmouth  commanded  the  English  auxiharies 
who  were  sent  to  the  Continent,  and  approved  himself 
a  gallant  soldier  and  a  not  unintelligent  officer.  On  his 
return  he  found  himself  the  most  popular  man  in  the 
kingdom.  Nothing  was  withheld  from  him  but  the 
crown  ;  nor  did  even  the  crown  seem  to  be  absolutely 
beyond  his  reach.  The  distinction  which  had  most  in- 
judiciously been  made  between  him  and  the  highest 
nobles  had  produced  evil  consequences.  When  a  boy 
he  had  been  invited  to  put  on  his  hat  in  the  presence 
chamber,  while  Howards  and  Seymours  stood  uncov- 
ered round  him.  When  foreign  princes  died,  he  had 
mourned  for  them  in  the  long  purple  cloak,  which  no 
other  subject,  except  the  Duke  of  York  and  Prince 
Rupert,  was  permitted  to  wear.  It  was  natural  that 
these  things  should  lead  him  to  regard  himself  as  a 
legitimate  prince  of  the  House  of  Stuart.  Charles, 
even  at  a  ripe  age,  was  devoted  to  his  pleasures  and 
regardless  of  his  dignity.  It  could  hardly  be  thought 
incredible  that  he  should  at  twenty  have  secretly  gone 
through  the  form  of  espousing  a  lady  whose  beauty  had 
fascinated  him.  Wiiile  Monmouth  was  still  a  child, 
and  while  the  Duke  of  York  still  passed  for  a  Protes- 
tant, it  was  rumoured  throughout  the  country,  and  even 
in  circles  which  ought  to  have  been  well  informed,  that 
the  King  had  made  Lucy  Walters  his  wife,  and  that, 
if  every  one  had  his  right,  her  son  would  be  Prince  of 
Wales.  Much  was  said  of  a  certain  black  box  which, 
according  to  the  vulvar  belief,  contained  the  contract 
of  marriage.  When  Monmouth  had  returned  from  the 
Low  Countries  with  a  high  character  for  valour  and 
conduct,  and  when  the  Duke  of  York  was  known  to 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER  CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  2T7 

be  a  member  of  a  cliurch  detested  by  tlie  great  majority 
of  the  nation,  this  idle  story  became  im[)ortant.  For  it 
there  was  not  the  shghtest  evidence.  Against  it  tliere 
was  the  solemn  asseveration  of  the  King,  made  before 
his  Council,  and  by  his  order  communicated  to  his 
people.  But  the  multitude,  always  fond  of  romantic 
adventures,  drank  in  eagerly  the  tale  of  the  secret  es- 
pousals and  the  black  box.  Some  chiefs  of  the  oppo- 
sition acted  on  this  occasion  as  they  acted  with  res])ect 
to  the  more  odious  fable  of  Oates,  and  countenanced  a 
story  which  they  must  have  despised.  The  interest 
which  the  populace  took  in  him  .whom  they  regarded  as 
the  champion  of  the  true  religitjn,  and  the  rightful  heir 
of  the  British  throne,  was  kept  up  by  every  artifice. 
When  Monmouth  arrived  in  London  at  midnight,  the 
watchmen  were  ordered  by  the  magistrates  to  proclaim 
the  joyful  event  through  the  streets  of  the  City  :  the 
people  left  their  beds  :  bonfires  were  lighted  :  the  win- 
dows were  illuminated  :  the  churches  were  opened  ;  and 
a  merry  peal  rose  from  all  the  steeples.  When  he  trav- 
elled, he  was  everywhere  received  with  not  less  pomp, 
and  with  far  more  enthusiasm,  than  had  been  displayed 
when  Kings  had  made  progres^s  through  the  realm. 
He  was  escorted  from  mansion  to  mansion  by  long 
cavalcades  of  armed  gentlemen  and  yeomen.  Cities 
poured  forth  their  whole  population  to  receive  him. 
Electors  thronged  round  him,  to  assure  him  that  their 
votes  were  at  his  disposal.  To  such  a  height  were  his 
pretensions  carried,  that  he  not  only  exhibited  on  his 
es(nitcheon  the  lions  of  England  and  the  lilies  of  France 
without  the  baton  sinister  under  which,  according  to  the 
law  of  heraldry,  they  should  have  been  debruised  in 
token  of  his  illegitimate  birth,  but  ventured  to  touch 
for  the  kino-'s  evil.     At  the  same  time,  he  neiilected  no 


278  HISTORY    OF    EN(}LAND,  [Cii.   fl. 

art  of  condescension  by  wliicli  the  love  of  the  multi- 
tude could  be  conciliated.  He  stood  godfather  to  the 
children  of  the  peasantry,  mingled  in  every  rustic 
sport,  wrestled,  played  at  quarterstaff,  and  won  foot- 
races in  his  boots  against  fleet  runners  in  shoes. 

It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that,  at  two  of  the  great- 
est conjunctures  in  our  history,  the  chiefs  of  the  Protes- 
tant party  should  have  committed  the  same  error,  and 
should  by  that  error  have  greatly  endangered  their 
country  and  their  religion.  At  the  death  of  Edward 
the  Sixth  they  set  up  the  Lady  Jane,  without  any  show 
of  birthright,  in  opposition,  not  only  to  their  enemy 
Mary,  but  also  to  Elizabeth,  the  true  hope  of  England 
and  of  the  Reformation.  Thus  the  most  respectable 
Protestants,  with  Elizabeth  at  their  head,  Avere  forced 
to  make  common  cause  with  the  Papists.  In  the  same 
manner,  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  later,  a  part  of 
the  opposition,  by  setting  up  Monmouth  as  a  claimant 
of  the  crow^n,  attacked  the  rights,  not  only  of  James, 
whom  they  justly  regarded  as  an  implacable  foe  of 
their  faith  and  their  liberties,  but  also  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Orange,  who  were  eminently  marked 
out,  both  by  situation  ^nd  by  personal  qualities,  as  the 
defenders  of  all  free  governments  and  of  all  reformed 
Churches. 

The  folly  of  this  course  speedily  became  manifest. 
At  present  the  popularity  of  Monmouth  constituted 
a  great  part  of  the  strength  of  the  opposition.  The 
elections  went  against  the  court :  the  day  fixed  for  the 
meeting  of  the  Houses  drew  near ;  and  it  was  neces- 
sary that  the  King  should  determine  on  some  line  of 
conduct.  Those  who  advised  him  discerned  the  first 
faint  signs  of  a  change  of  public  feeling,  and  hoped  that, 
by  merely  postponing  the  conflict,  he  would  be  able  to 


Ch.  II.J  under   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  27l:» 

secure  the  victory.  He  tlierefore,  without  even  askinji 
the  opinion  of  the  Council  of  the  Thirty,  resolved  to  pro- 
rogue the  new  Parliament  before  it  entered  on  business. 
At  the  same  time  the  Duke  of  York,  who  had  returned 
from  Brussels,  was  ordered  to  retire  to  Scotland,  and 
was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  administration  of  that 
kingdom. 

Temple's  plan  of  government  was  now  avowedly 
abandoned  and  very  soon  forgotten.  The  Privy  Coun- 
cil again  became  what  it  had  been.  Shaftesbury  and 
those  who  were  connected  with  him  in  politics  resigned 
their  seats.  Temple  himself,  as  was  his  wont  in  unquiet 
times,  retired  to  his  garden  and  his  library.  Essex 
quitted  the  board  of  Treasury,  and  cast  in  his  lot  with 
the  oi)position.  But  Halifax,  disgusted  and  alarmed 
by  the  violence  of  his  old  associates,  and  Sunderland, 
who  never  quitted  place  while  he  could  hold  it,  remained 
in  the  Kin<»;'s  service. 

In  consecjuence  of  the  resignations  which  took  place 
at  this  conjuncture,  the  way  to  greatness  was  left  clear 
to  a  new  set  of  aspirants.  Two  statesmen,  who  sid)se- 
quently  rose  to  the  highest  eminence  which  a  British 
subject  can  reach,  soon  began  to  attract  a  large  share 
of  the  public  attention.  These  were  Lawrence  Hyde 
and  Sidney  Godolpliin, 

Lawrence  Hyde  was  the  second  son  of  the  Chancellor 
Clarendon,  and  was  brother  of  the  first  Duch-  j,.,,vrcnco 
ess  of  York.  He  had  excellent  j^arts,  which  "^''''• 
had  been  improved  by  parliamentary  and  diplomatic 
ex|)erience  ;  but  the  infirmities  of  his  temper  detracted 
•much  from  the  effective  strenoth  of  his  abilities.  Ne- 
gotiator  and  courtier  as  he  was,  he  never  learned  the 
art  of  governing  or  of  concealing  his  emotions.  When 
prosperous,  he  was  insolent  and  boastful :  when  he  sus- 


280  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

tained  a  check,  his  undiso-uised  mortification  doubled 
the  triumph  of  his  enemies  :  very  slight  provocations 
sufficed  to  kindle  his  anger ;  and  when  he  was  angry- 
he  said  bitter  things  which  he  forgot  as  soon  as  he  was 
pacified,  but  which  others  remembered  many  years. 
His  quickness  and  peneti'ation  would  have  made  him  a 
consummate  man  of  business  but  for  his  selfsufficiency 
and  impatience.  His  writings  pi'ove  that  he  had  many 
of  the  qualities  of  an  orator  :  but  his  irritability  pre- 
vented him  from  doing  himself  justice  in  debate  :  for 
nothing  was  easier  than  to  goad  him  into  a  passion  ;  and, 
from  the  moment  when  he  went  into  a  passion,  he  was  at 
the  mercy  of  opponents  far  inferior  to  him  in  capacity. 

Unlike  most  of  the  leading  politicians  of  that  genera- 
tion he  was  a  consistent,  dogged,  and  rancorous  party 
man,  a  Cavalier  of  the  old  school,  a  zealous  champion 
of  the  crown  and  of  the  Church,  and  a  hater  of  Re- 
publicans and  Nonconformists.  He  had  consequently  a 
great  body  of  personal  adherents.  The  clergy  especially 
looked  on  him  as  their  own  man,  and  extended  to  his 
foibles  an  indulgence  of  which,  to  say  the  truth,  he 
stood  in  some  need :  for  he  drank  deep ;  and  when  he 
was  in  a  rage,  —  and  he  very  often  was  in  a  rage,  — 
he  swore  like  a  porter. 

He  now  succeeded  Essex  at  the  Treasury.  It  is  to 
be  observed  that  the  place  of  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury 
had  not  then  the  importance  and  dignity  which  now 
belong  to  it.  When  there  was  a  Lord  Treasurer,  that 
o-reat  officer  was  generally  prime  minister  :  but,  when 
the  white  staff  was  in  commission,  the  chief  commis- 
sioner hardly  ranked  so  high  as  a  Secretary  of  State.  It  ■ 
was  not  till  the  time  of  Walpole  that  the  First  Lord  of 
the  Treasury  was  considered  as  the  head  of  the  execu- 
tive administration. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHAELES  THE   SECOND.  281 

Goclol])liin  had  been  bred  a  page  at  Whiteliall,  and 
had  early  acquired  all  the  flexibility  and  the  gj^^^^  q^^ 
self'posscssion  of  a  veteran  courtier.  He  was  '^o'p'^'"- 
laborious,  clearheaded,  and  profoundly  versed  in  the 
details  of  finance.  Every  government,  therefore,  found 
him  an  useful  servant :  and  there  v^^as  nothino;  in  his 
opinions  or  in  his  character  which  could  prevent  him 
from  serving  any  government.  "  Sidney  Godolphin," 
said  Charles,  "  is  never  in  the  way,  and  never  out  of 
the  way."  This  pointed  remark  goes  far  to  explain 
Godolphin's  extraordinary  success  in  life. 

He  acted  at  different  times  with  both  the  great  po- 
litical parties :  but  he  never  shared  in  the  passions  of 
either.  Like  most  men  of  cautious  tempers  and  pros- 
perous fortunes,  he  had  a  strong  disposition  to  support 
whatever  existed.  He  disliked  revolutions  ;  and,  for 
the  same  reason  for  which  he  disliked  revolutions,  he 
disliked  counterrevolutions.  His  deportment  was  re- 
markably grave  and  reserved  :  but  his  personal  tastes 
•were  low  and  frivolous  ;  and  most  of  the  time  which  he 
could  save  from  ])ublic  business  was  spent  in  racing, 
cardplaying,  and  cockfighting.  He  now  sate  below 
Rochester  at  the  board  of  Treasury,  and  distinguished 
himself  there  by  assiduity  and  intelligence. 

Before  the  new  Parliament  was  suffered  to  meet  for 
despatch  of  business,  a  whole  year  elapsed,  an  eventful 
year,  which  has  left  lasting  traces  in  our  manners  and 
language.  Never  before  had  i)olitical  controversy  been 
carried  on  with  so  much  freedom.  Never  before  had 
political  clubs  existed  with  so  elaborate  an  organisation, 
or  so  formidable  an  influence.  The  one  question  of  the 
exclusion  occupied  the  jniblic  mind.  All  the  presses 
and  pulpits  of  the  realm  tot)k  part  in  the  conflict.  On 
one  side  it  was  maintained  that  the  constitution  and 


282  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

reliirioii  of  tlie  State  would  never  be  secure  under  a 
Popish  King  ;  on  the  other,  tliat  the  right  of  James  to 
wear  the  crown  in  his  turn  was  derived  from  God,  and 
could  not  be  annulled,  even  by  the  consent  of  all  the 
Violence  of     brauclies  of  the  legislature.     Every  county, 

factions  on  on  .  .        .    ' 

tiie  subject  evcry  town,  every  tamily,  was  m  agitation. 
Bioniiiii.  The  civilities  and  hospitalities  of  neighbour- 
hood were  interi'upted.  The  dearest  ties  of  friendship 
and  of  blood  were  sundered.  Even  schoolboys  were 
divided  into  angry  parties  ;  and  the  Duke  of  York  and 
the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  had  zealous  adherents  on  all  the 
forms  of  Westminster  and  Eton.  The  theatres  shook 
with  the  roar  of  the  contending  factions.  Pope  Joan 
was  brought  on  the  stage  by  the  zealous  Protestants. 
Pensioned  poets  filled  their  prologues  and  epilogues 
with  eulogies  on  the  King  and  the  Duke.  The  male- 
contents  besieged  the  throne  with  petitions,  demanding 
that  Parliament  might  be  forthwith  convened.  The 
loyalists  sent  up  addresses,  expressing  the  utmost  ab- 
horrence of  all  who  presumed  to  dictate  to  the  sover- 
eign. The  citizens  of  London  assembled  by  tens  of 
thousands  to  burn  the  Pope  in  effigy.  The  government 
posted  cavalry  at  Temple  Bar,  and  placed  ordnance 
round  Whitehall.  In  that  year  our  tongue  was  en- 
riched with  two  words,  Mob  and  Sham,  remarkable 
memorials  of  a  season  of  tumult  and  imposture.^  Oppo- 
nents of  the  court  were  called  Birminghams,  Petition- 
ers, and  Exclusionists.  Those  who  took  the  King's 
,  side  were  Antibirminghams,  Abhorrers,  and  Tantivies. 
These  appellations  soon  became  obsolete :  but  at  this 
Names  of       time  wei'O  first  heard  two  nicknames  which. 

Whig  and  ,  ,  .    .       ,,  .  .        .  ,, 

Tory.  though  oi'igmally  given  m  insult,  were  soon 

assumed  with  pride,  which  are  still  in  daily  use,  which 

1  North's  Exanien,  231.  574. 


Ch.  II.J  under   CHARLE3    THE   SECOND,  283 

have  spread  as  widely  as  the  English  race,  and  which 
will  last  as  long  as  the  English  literature.  It  is  a  curi- 
ous circumstance  that  one  of  these  nicknames  was  of 
Scotch,  and  the  other  of  Irish,  origin.  Both  in  Scot- 
land  and  in  Ireland,  misgovernment  had  called  into 
existence  bands  of  desperate  men  whose  ferocity  w:is 
heightened  by  religious  enthusiasm.  In  Scotland,  some 
of  the  persecuted  Covenanters,  driven  mad  by  oppres 
sion,  had  lately  murdered  the  Primate,  had  taken  arms 
against  the  government,  had  obtained  some  advantages 
against  the  King's  forces,  and  had  not  been  put  down 
till  Monmouth,  at  the  head  of  some  troops  from  Eng- 
land, had  routed  them  at  Bothwell  Bridoe.  These 
zealots  were  most  numerous  among  the  rustics  of  the 
western  lowlands,  who  were  vulgarly  called  Whigs. 
Thus  the  appellation  of  Whig  was  fastened  on  the  Pres- 
byterian zealots  of  Scotland,  and  was  transferred  to 
those  Englisii  politicians  who  showed  a  disposition  to 
opj)ose  the  court,  and  to  treat  Protestant  Nonconform- 
ists with  indulgence.  The  bogs  of  Ireland,  at  the  same 
time,  afforded  a  refuge  to  Popish  outlaws,  much  resem- 
bling those  who  were  afterwards  known  as  Whiteboys. 
These  men  were  then  called  Tories.  The  name  of 
Tory  was  therefore  given  to  Englishmen  who  refused 
to  concur  in  excluding  a  Roman  Catholic  prince  from 
the  throne. 

The  rage  of  the  hostile  factions  would  have  been 
sufficiently  violent,  if  it  had  been  left  to  itself.  But  it 
was  studiously  exasperated  by  the  common  enemy  of 
both.  Lewis  still  continued  to  bribe  and  flatter  both 
the  court  and  the  oi)i)()sition.  He  exhorted  Charles  to 
be  firm  :  he  exhorted  James  to  raise  a  civil  war  in 
Scotland  :  he  exhorted  tjie  Wliigs  not  to  ilincli,  and  to 
rely  with  cuidideiKe  on  the  protection  of  France. 


284  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H. 

Through  all  this  agitation  a  discerning  eye  might 
have  perceived  that  the  public  opinion  was  gradually 
changing.  The  persecution  of  the  Roman  Catholics 
went  on  ;  but  convictions  were  no  longer  matters  of 
course.  A  new  brood  of  false  witnesses,  among  whom 
a  villain  named  Dangerfield  was  the  most  conspicuous, 
infested  the  courts  :  but  the  stories  of  these  men,  though 
better  constructed  than  that  of  Oates,  found  less  credit. 
Juries  were  no  longer  so  easy  of  belief  as  during  the 
panic  which  had  followed  the  murder  of  Godfrey ;  and 
Judges  who,  while  the  popular  frenzy  was  at  the  height, 
had  been  its  most  obsequious  instruments,  now  ventured 
to  express  some  part  of  what  they  had  from  the  first 
thought. 

At  length,  in  October  1680,  the  Parliament  met. 
Meeting  of  The  Whigs  had  so  great  a  majority  in  the 
ttie  Kx"Tu-' '  Commons  that  the  Exclusion  Bill  went  through 
paSesthe  ^^^  ^ts  stagcs  there  without  difficulty.  The 
Commons.  j^^jj^g  scarccly  knew  on  what  members  of  his 
own  cabinet  he  could  reckon.  Hyde  had  been  true  to 
his  Tory  opinions,  and  had  steadily  supported  the  cause 
of  hereditary  monarchy.  But  Godolphin,  anxious  for 
quiet,  and  believing  that  quiet  could  be  restored  only 
by  concession,  wished  the  bill  to  pass.  Sunderland, 
ever  false  and  ever  shortsighted,  unable  to  discern  the 
signs  of  approaching  reaction,  and  anxious  to  conciliate 
the  party  which  he  believed  to  be  irresistible,  deter- 
mined to  vote  against  the  court.  The  Duchess  of  Ports- 
mouth implored  her  royal  lover  not  to  rush  headlong 
to  destruction.  If  there  were  any  point  on  which  he 
had  a  scruple  of  conscience  or  of  honour,  it  was  the 
question  of  the  succession  ;  but  during  some  days  it 
seemed  that  he  would  submit.  He  wavered,  asked 
what  sum  the  Commons  would  give  him  if  he  yielded, 


Ch.  n.]  UNDER   CHAELES  THE   SECOND.  285 

and  suffered  a  negotiation  to  be  opened  with  the  lead- 
ing Whigs.  But  a  deep  mutual  distrust  which  had 
been  many  years  growing,  and  wliicli  had  been  care- 
i'ully  nursed  by  the  arts  of  France,  made  a  treaty  im- 
possible. Neither  side  would  place  confidence  in  the 
other.  The  whole  nation  now  looked  with  breathless 
anxiety  to  the  House  of  Lords.  The  assemblage  of 
])eers  was  large.  The  King  himself  was  present.  The 
delate  was  long,  earnest,  and  occasionally  furious. 
Some  hands  were  laid  on  the  pommels  of  swords,  in 
a  manner  which  revived  the  recollection  of  the  stormy 
Parliaments  of  Henry  the  Third  and  Richard  the  Sec- 
ond. Shaftesbury  and  Essex  were  joined  by  the  treach- 
erous Sunderland.     But  the  genius  of  Halifax  Exclusion 

C^  111-     ^'"  ''«'Je«'«d 

bore  down  all  opposition.     Deserted   by  his   by  the  Lords. 

most  important  colleagues,  and  opposed  to  a  crowd  of 
able  antagonists,  he  defended  the  cause  of  the  Duke  of 
York,  in  a  succession  of  speeches  which,  many  years 
later,  were  remembered  as  masterpieces  of  reasoning, 
of  wit,  and  of  eloquence.  It  is  seldom  that  oratory 
changes  votes.  Yet  the  attestation  of  contemporaries 
leaves  no  doubt  that,  on  this  occasion,  votes  were 
changed  by  the  oratory  of  Halifax.  The  Bishops,  true 
to  their  doctrines,  supported  the  principle  of  hereditaiy 
right,  and  the  bill  was  rejected  by  a  great  majority.^ 

1  A  peer  who  wiis  proscnt  lias  described  the  effect  of  Halilax's  oratory  in 
words  which  I  will  quote,  because,  thou};h  the}'  have  been  long  iu  print, 
tliey  arc  probably  known  to  few  even  of  the  most  curious  and  diligent  read- 
ers of  history. 

"  Of  powerful  eloquence  and  grejit  parts  were  the  Duke's  enemies  who 
did  assert  the  bill;  but  a  noble  Lord  appeared  against  it  who,  that  day,  in 
all  the  force  of  .spcecli,  in  reason,  in  arguments  of  what  could  concern  the 
public  or  the  private  interests  of  men,  in  honour,  in  conscience,  in  estate, 
did  outdo  himsolf  ami  every  oilier  man;  and  in  fine  his  conduct  and  his 
parts  were  both  victorious,  and  by  him  all  the  wit  and  malice  of  that  party 
was  overthrown." 

This  passage  is  taken  from  a  memoir  of  Henry  Earl  of  Peterborough,  in 


286  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Cn.  II 

The  i)arty  which  preponderated  in  the  House  of 
Execution  of  Commoiis,  bitterly  mortified  by  this  defeat, 
Stafford.  fouiid  some  consolation  in  shedding  the  blood 
of  Roman  Catholics.  William  Howard,  Viscount  Staf- 
ford, one  of  the  unhapjiy  men  who  had  been  accused 
of  a  share  in  the  plot,  was  impeached  ;  and  on  the  tes- 
timony of  Gates  and  of  two  other  false  witnesses.  Dug- 
dale  and  Turberville,  was  found  guilty  of  high  treason, 
and  suffered  death.  But  the  circumstances  of  his  trial 
and  execution  ought  to  have  given  an  useful  warning 
to  the  Whig  leaders.  A  large  and  respectable  minor- 
ity of  the  House  of  Lords  pronounced  the  prisoner  not 
guilty.  The  multitude,  which  a  few  months  before 
had  received  the  dying  declarations  of  Oates's  victims 
with  mockery  and  execrations,  now  loudly  expressed  a 
belief  that  Stafford  was  a  murdered  man.  When  he 
with  his  last  breath  protested  his  innocence,  the  cry 
was,  "  God  bless  you,  my  Lord !  We  believe  you,  my 
Lord."  A  judicious  observer  might  easily  have  pre- 
dicted that  the  blood  then  shed  would  shortly  have 
blood. 

The  King  determined  to  try  once  more  the  experi- 
Generai  eiec  mcut  of  a  dissolutiou.  A  ucw  Parliament  was 
tion  of  1681.  gunjn^oned  to  meet  at  Oxford,  in  March  168 L 
Since  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets  the  Houses  had  con- 
stantly sate  at  Westminster,  except  Avhen  the  plague 
was  raging  in  the  capital  :  but  so  extraordinary  a  con- 
juncture seemed  to  require  extraordinary  precautions. 
If  the  Parliament  were  held  in  its  usual  place  of  assem- 
blino-,  the  House  of  Commons  might  declare  itself  per- 

a  volume  entitled  "  Succinct  Genealogies,  bj'  Kobert  Halstead,"  foi.  1G85. 
The  name  of  Halstead  is  fictitious.  The  real  authors  were  the  Earl  of  Peter- 
borough himself  and  his  chnplaiu.  The  book  is  extremely  rare.  Only 
twentv-four  copies  were  printed,  two  of  which  are  now  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum. Of  these  two  one  belonged  to  George  the  Fourth,  and  the  other  to 
Mr.  Grenville. 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE    SECOl^D.  287 

manent,  and  might  call  for  aid  on  the  magistrates  and 
citizens  of  London.  The  trainbands  might  rise  to  de- 
fend Shaftesbury  as  they  liad  risen  forty  years  before 
to  defend  Pym  and  Hampden.  The  Guards  might  be 
overpowered,  the  palace  forced,  the  King  a  jirisoner  in 
the  hands  of  his  mutinous  subjects.  At  Oxford  there 
was  no  such  danger.  The  University  was  devoted  to 
the  crown  ;  and  the  gentry  of  the  neighbourhood  were 
generally  Tories.  Here,  therefore,  the  opposition  had 
more  reason  than  the  King  to  apprehend  violence. 

The  elections  were  sharply  contested.  The  Whigs 
still  comj)osed  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Commons  : 
but  it  was  plain  that  th,e  Tory  spirit  was  fast  rising 
throughout  the  country.  It  should  seem  that  the  sa- 
gacious and  versatile  Shaftesbury  ought  to  have  fore- 
seen the  cominii;  chano;e,  and  to  have  consented  to  the 
compromise  which  the  court  offered :  but  he  a]i))ears  to 
have  utterly  forgotten  his  old  tactics.  Instead  of  mak- 
ing dispositions  whicli,  in  the  worst  event,  would  have 
secured  his  retreat,  he  took  up  a  position  in  which  it 
was  necessary  that  he  should  either  conquer  or  perish. 
Perhaps  his  head,  strong  as  it  was,  had  been  turned  by 
])opularity,  by  success,  and  by  the  excitement  of  con- 
flict. Perliaps  he  had  spurred  his  party  till  lie  could 
no  longer  curb  it,  and  was  really  hurried  on  headlong 
by  those  whom  he  seemed  to  guide. 

The  eventful  day  arrived.     The  meeting  at  Oxford 
resembled  rather  that  of  a  Polish  Diet  than   i.,.,riia,ii(nt 
that  of  an  English  Parliament.     The   Whig  ^^'^tui^' 
members  were  escorted  by  great  numbers  of   <i^''''o'^'*^^'^- 
their  armed  and  mounted   tenants  and  serving  men, 
who  exchanged  looks  of  defiance  willi  the  royal  Guards. 
The  slightest   provocation  might,  mider  such  circum- 
stances, have  produced  a  civil  war ;  but  neither  side 


288  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

dared  to  strike  the  first  blow.  Tlie  King  again  of- 
fered to  consent  to  any  thing  but  the  Exclusion  Bill. 
The  Commons  were , determined  to  accept  nothing  but 
the  Exclusion  Bill.  In  a  few  days  the  Parliament  was 
ao;ain  dissolved. 

The  King  had  triumphed.  The  reaction,  which  had 
TiTvreac-  bcguu  somc  months  before  the  meeting  of 
*'°°-  the  Houses  at  Oxford,  now  went  rapidly  on. 

The  nation,  indeed,  was  still  hostile  to  Popery :  but, 
when  men  reviewed  the  whole  history  of  the  plot,  they 
felt  that  their  Protestant  zeal  had  hurried  them  into 
folly  and  crime,  and  could  scarcely  believe  that  they 
had  been  induced  by  nursery  tales  to  clamour  for  the 
blood  of  fellow  subjects  and  fellow  Christians.  The 
most  loyal,  indeed,  covdd  not  deny  that  the  administra- 
tion of  Charles  had  often  been  highly  blamable.  But 
men  who  had  not  the  full  information  Avhich  we  possess 
touchino;  his  dealings  with  France,  and  who  were  dis- 
gusted  by  the  violence  of  the  Whigs,  enumerated  the 
large  concessions  which,  during  the  last  few  years,  he 
had  made  to  his  Parliaments,  and  the  still  larger  con- 
cessions which  he  had  declared  himself  willing  to  make. 
He  had  consented  to  the  laws  which  excluded  Roman 
Catholics  from  the  House  of  Lords,  from  the  Privy 
Council,  and  from  all  civil  and  military  offices.  He 
had  passed  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act.  If  securities  yet 
stronger  had  not  been  pro\aded  against  the  dangers  to 
which  the  constitution  and  the  Church  might  be  ex- 
posed under  a  Roman  Catholic  sovereign,  the  fault  lay, 
not  with  Charles  who  had  invited  the  Parliament  to 
propose  such  securities,  but  with  those  Whigs  who  had 
refused  to  hear  of  any  substitute  for  the  Exclusion  Bill. 
One  thing  only  had  the  Khig  denied  to  his  people.  He 
had  refused  to  take  away  his  brother's  birthright.    And 


Ch.  II.l  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  289 

was  there  not  good  reason  to  believe  that  this  refusal 
was  prompted  b}-  laudable  feelings  ?  What  selfish  mo- 
tJA'e  could  faction  itself  impute  to  the  royal  mind  ?  The 
Exclusion  Bill  did  not  curtail  the  reigning  King's  pre- 
rogatives, or  diminish  his  income.  Indeed,  by  passing 
it,  he  might  easily  have  obtained  an  ample  addition  to 
his  own  revenue.  And  what  was  it  to  him  who  ruled 
after  him?  Nay,  if  he  had  personal  predilections,  they 
were  kr.own  to  be  rather  in  favour  of  the  Duke  of  Mon- 
mouth than  of  the  Duke  of  York.  The  most  natural  ex- 
planation of  the  King's  conduct  therefoi-e  seemed  to  be 
that,  careless  as  was  iiis  temper,  and  loose  as  were  his 
morals,  he  had,  on  this  occasion,  acted  from  a  sense  of 
duty  and  honour.  And,  if  so,  would  the  nation  compel 
him  to  do  what  he  thought  criminal  and  disjiraceful  ? 
To  apply,  even  by  strictly  constitutional  means,  a  violent 
pressure  to  his  conscience,  seemed  to  zealous  Royalists 
ungenerous  and  undutiful.  But  strictly  constitutional 
means  were  not  the  only  means  which  the  Whirrs  were 
disposed  to  employ.  Signs  were  already  discernible 
which  portended  the  approach  of  great  troubles.  Men, 
who  in  the  time  of  the  civil  war  and  of  the  Common- 
wealth had  acquired  an  odious  notoriety,  had  emerged 
from  the  obscuritv  in  which,  after  the  Restoration,  thev 
had  hidden  themselves  from  the  general  hatred,  showeil 
their  confident  and  busy  faces  everywhere,  and  aj)- 
peared  to  anticipate  a  second  reign  of  the  Saints.  An- 
other Naseby,  another  High  Court  of  Justice,  another 
usurper  on  the  throne,  the  Lords  again  ejected  from 
their  hall  by  violence,  the  Universities  again  purged, 
the  Church  again  robbed  and  persecuted,  the  Puritans 
again  donnnant,  to  such  results  did  the  desperate  pol- 
icy of  the  opposition  seem  to  tend. 

Strongly  moved  by  these  apprehensions,  the  majority 

vol,.  I.  19 


290  HISTORY   OP  ENGLANH,  [Ch.  II. 

of  the  upper  and  middle  classes  hastened  to  rally  round 
the  throne.     The  situation  of  the  King  bore,  at  this 
time,  a  great  resemblance  to  that  in  which  his  father 
stood  just    after    the  Remonstrance    had    been   voted. 
But  the  reaction  of  1G41  had  not  been  suflPered  to  run 
its    course.     Charles    the    First,  at   the  very  moment 
when  his  people,  long  estranged,  w^ere  returning  to  hint 
witli  hearts  disposed  to  reconciliation,  had,  by  a  perfid- 
ious violation  of  the  fundamental  laws  of  the    realm, 
forfeited  their  confidence  for  ever.     Had  Charles  the 
Second  taken  a  similar   course,  had    lie    arrested    the 
Whig  leaders  in  an  irregular  manner,  and  impeached 
them  of  high  treason  before  a  tribunal  which  had  no 
legal    jurisdiction    over    them,    it   is    highly    probable 
that    they   would    speedily    have    regained    the  ascen- 
dency which  they  had  lost.     Fortunately  for  himself 
he  was  induced,  at  this  crisis,  to  adopt  a  policy  sino-u- 
larly  judicious.     He  determined  to  conform  to  the  law, 
but  at  the- same  time  to  make  vigorous  and  iinsparino- 
use  of  the  law  against  his  adversaries.     He  was   not 
bound  to  convoke  a  Parliament  till  three  years  should 
have  elapsed.      He  was  not  much  distressed  for  money. 
The  produce  of  the  taxes  which  had  been  settled  on 
him   for  life  exceeded  the  estimate.     He  was  at  peace 
with  all  the  world.     He  could  retrench  his  expenses 
by  giving  up  the  costly  and  useless  settlement  of  Tan- 
gier ;  and  he  might  hope  for  pecuniary  aid  from  Fraiice. 
He  had,  therefore,  ample  time  and  means  for  a  system- 
atic attack  on  the  opposition  under  the  forms   of  the 
constitution.      The    Judges    were    removable    at   his 
pleasure  :  the  juries  were  nominated  by  the  Sheriffs ; 
and,  in  almost  all  the  counties  of  England,  the  Sheriffs 
were  nominated  by  himself.     Witnesses,  of  the  same 
class  with  those  who  had  recently  sworn  away  the 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  291 

lives  of  Papists,  Avere  ready  to  swear  away  the  lives 
of  Whio-s. 

The  first  victim  was  College,  a  noisy  and  violent 
demagogue  of  mean  birth  and  education.  He  Persecution 
was  by  trade  a  joiner,  and  was  celebrated  as  °f''^«="'"es 
the  inventor  of  the  Protestant  flail.^  He  had  been  at 
Oxford  when  the  Parliament  sate  there,  and  was  ac- 
cused of  having  planned  a  rising  and  an  attack  on  the 
King's  guards.  Evidence  was  given  against  him  by 
Dugdale  and  Turberville,  the  same  infamous  men  who 
had,  a  few  months  earlier,  borne  false  witness  against 
Stafford.  In  the  sight  of  a  jury  of  country  squires  no 
Exclusionist  was  likely  to  find  favour.  College  was 
convicted.  The  verdict  was  received  by  the  crowd 
which  filled  the  court  house  of  Oxford  with  a  roar  of 
exultation,  as  barbarous  as  that  which  he  and  his  friends 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  raising  when  innocent  Papists 
were  doomed  to  the  gallows.  His  execution  was  the 
beginning  of  a  new  judicial  massaci*e,  not  less  atrocious 
than  that  in  which  he  had  himself  borne  a  share. 

The  government,  emboldeped  by  this  first  victory, 
now  aimed  a  blow  at  an  enemv  of  a  very  different  class. 
It  was  resolved  that  Shaftesbury  sliould  be  brought  to 
trial  for  his  life.  Evidence  was  collected  which,  it  was 
thouglit,  would  support  a  charge  of  treason.  But  the 
facts  wliich  it  was  necessary  to  prove  were  alleged  to 
have  been  committed  in  London.  The  Sheriffs  of 
London,  chosen  by  the  citizens,  were  zealous  Whigs. 
They  named  a  Wiiig  grand  jury,  which  threw  out  the 
bill.  This  defeat,  fiir  from  discouran-ino;  those  Avho  ad- 
vised  the  King,  suggested  to  them  a  new  and  daring 

1  Tliis  is  mciitionod  in  the  curious  work  entitled  "  Rn<^rrniiglio  della 
lolenne  Coiiip:irs;i  fntta  in  Roma  gli  otto  di  Geiinaio,  1G87,  dull'  illustris- 
limo  et  excellentissiino  signor  Conte  di  Castlemaine." 


292  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  \Ch.  II. 

scheme.  Since  the  charter  of  the  capital  was  in  their 
Charter  of  waj,  tliat  charter  must  be  annulled.  It  was 
confiscated,  pretended,  therefore,  that  the  City  of  London 
had  by  some  irregularities  forfeited  its  municipal  privi- 
leges ;  and  proceedings  were  instituted  against  the  cor- 
poration in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  At  the  same 
time  those  laws  which  had,  soon  after  the  Restora- 
tion, been  enacted  against  Nonconformists,  and  which 
had  remained  dormant  during  the  ascendency  of  the 
Whio-s,  were  enforced  all  over  the  kingdom  with  ex- 
treme  rigour. 

Yet  the  spirit  of  the  Whigs  was  not  subdued. 
Whig  conspir-  Thougli  in  evil  plight,  they  were  still  a  nu- 
**^'*^'  nierous    and  powerful   party  ;    and,   as  they 

mustered  strong  in  the  large  towns,  and  especially  in 
the  capital,  they  made  a  noise  and  a  show  more  than 
proportioned  to  their  real  force.  Animated  by  the 
recollection  of  past  triumphs,  and  by  the  sense  of  pres- 
ent oppression,  they  overrated  both  their  strength  and 
their  wrongs.  It  was  not  in  their  power  to  make  out 
that  clear  and  overwhelming  case  which  can  alone 
justify  so  violent  a  remedy  as  resistance  to  an  estab- 
lished government.  Whatever  they  might  suspect, 
they  could  not  prove  that  their  sovei'eign  had  entered 
into  a  treaty  with  France  against  the  religion  and 
liberties  of  England.  What  was  apparent  was  not  suf- 
ficient to  warrant  an  appeal  to  the  sword.  If  the 
Lords  had  thrown  out  the  Exclusion  Bill,  they  had 
thrown  it  out  in  the  exercise  of  a  right  coeval  with 
the  constitution.  If  the  King  had  dissolved  the  Ox- 
ford Parliament,  he  had  done  so  by  virtue  of  a  preroga- 
tive which  had  never  been  questioned.  If  the  court 
had,  since  the  dissolution,  done  some  harsh  things,  still 
those  things  were  in  strict  conformity  with  the  letter 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  293 

of  the  law,  and  with  the  recent  practice  of  the  male- 
contents  tliemselves.     If  the  King  had  prosecuted  liis 
opponents,  he  had  prosecuted  them  according  to  the 
proper  forms,  and  before  the  proper  tribunals.     The 
evidence  now  produced  for  the  crown   was  at   least 
as  worthy  of  credit  as  the  evidence  on  which  the  no- 
blest blood  of  England  had  lately  been  shed  by  the  op- 
position.    The  treatment  which  an  accused  Whig  had 
now  to  expect  from  judges,  advocates,  sheriffs,  jui'ies, 
and  spectators,  was  no  worse  than  the  treatment  which 
had  lately  been  thought  by  the  Whigs  good  enough 
for  an  accused  Papist.     If  the  privileges  of  the  City  of 
London   were   attacked,  they   were  attacked,   not  by 
military  violence  or  by  any  disputable  exercise  of  pre- 
rogative, but  according  to  the  regular  practice  of  West- 
minster Hall.     No  tax  was  imposed  by  royal  authority. 
No  law  was  suspended.     The  Habeas  Corpus  Act  Avas 
respected.     Even   the  Test  Act  was   enforced.     The 
opposition  therefore  could  not  bring  home  to  the  King 
that  species  of  misgovernment  which  alone  could  jus- 
tify insurrection.     AnjI,  even  had  his  misgovernment 
been  more   flagrant   than    it   was,   insurrection   would 
still  have  been  criminal,  because  it  was  almost  certain 
to   be  unsuccessful.     The  situation   of  the   Whigs  in 
1682  differed  widely  fi-om  tliat  of  the  Roundheads  forty 
years  before.     Those  who  took  up  arms  against  Charles 
the   First  acted  under  the   authority  of  a  Parliament 
which  had  been  legally  assembled,   and   which   could 
not,  without  its  own  consent,  be  legally  dissolved.     The 
opponents  of  Charles  the   Second   were   private   men. 
Almost  all  the  military  and  naval  resources  of  the  king- 
dom  had  been    at  the   disj)0sal  of  those  who  resisted 
Charles  the  First.     All  the  mihtary  and  naval  resources 
of  the  kingdom  were  at   the   disposal   of  Charles   the 


294  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

Second.     The  House  of  Commons  had  been  supported 
by  at  least  half  the  nation  against  Charles  the  First. 
But   those    who    were    disposed   to    levy   war    against 
Charles    the    Second    were    certainly  a   minority.     It 
could  hardly  be  doubted,  therefore,  that,  if  they  at- 
tempted a  rising,  they  would  fail.     Still  less  could  it 
be  doubted  that  their  failure  would  aggravate    every 
evil  of  which  they  complained.     The   true   policy  of 
the  Whigs  was  to  submit  with  patience  to  adversity 
which  was  the  natural  consequence  and  the  just  pun- 
ishment of  their  errors,  to  wait  patiently  for  that  turn 
of  pubUc  feeling  which  must  inevitably  come,  to  observe 
the  law,  and  to  avail  themselves  of  the  protection,  im- 
perfect indeed,  but  by  no  means  nugatory,  which  the 
law  afforded  to  innocence.      Unhap])ily   they  took  a 
very   different  course.      Unscrupulous   and  hotheaded 
chiefs"  of  the  party  formed  and  discussed  schemes  of  re- 
sistance, and  were  heard,  if  not  with  approbation,  yet 
with  the  show  of  acquiescence,  by  much  better  men 
than  themselves.     It  was  proposed  that  there  should 
be  simultaneous  insurrections  in  London,  in  Cheshire, 
at  Bristol,   and  at  Newcastle.     Communications  were 
opened  with  the  discontented  Presbyterians  of  Scotland, 
who  were  suflPering  under  a  tyranny  such  as  England, 
in  the   worst  times,   had  never  known.      While   the 
leaders  of  the  opposition  thus  revolved  plans  of  open 
rebellion,  but  were  still  restrained  by  fears  or  scruples 
from  taking  any  decisive  step,  a  design  of  a  very  dif- 
ferent kind  was  meditated  by  some  of  their  accomplices. 
To   fierce   spirits,   unrestrained  by  principle,  or  mad- 
dened by  fanaticism,    it   seemed   that   to  waylay  and 
murder  the  Kino-  and  his  brother  was  the  shortest  and 
surest  way  of  vindicating  the  Protestant  religion  and 
the  liberties  of  England.      A  place  and  a  time  were 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  295 

named  ;  and  the  details  of  the  butclieiy  were  frequently 
discussed,  if  not  detinitively  arranged.  This  scheme  was 
known  but  to  few,  and  Avas  concealed  with  especial  care 
from  the  upright  and  humane  Russell,  and  from  Mon- 
mouth, who,  though  not  a  man  of  delicate  conscience, 
would  have  recoiled  with  horror  from  the  guilt  of  par- 
ricide. Thus  there  were  two  plots,  one  within  the  other. 
The  object  of  the  great  Whig  plot  was  to  raise  the  nation 
in  arms  anainst  the  government.  The  lesser  plot,  com- 
rnonlv  called  the  Rye  House  Plot,  in  which  only  a  few 
desperate  men  were  concerned,  had  for  its  object  the 
assassination  of  the  King  and  of  the  heir  presumptive. 

Both  plots  were  soon  discovered.  Cowardly  traitors 
hastened  to  save  themselves,  by  divulging  all,  Detection  of 
and  more  than  all,  that  had  passed  m  the  conspiracies, 
deliberations  of  the  party.  That  only  a  small  minority 
of  those  who  meditated  resistance  had  admitted  into 
their  minds  the  thought  of  assassination  is  fully  estab- 
lished :  but,  as  the  two  conspiracies  ran  into  each  other, 
it  was  not  ditHcult  for  the  government  to  confound 
them  together.  The  just  indignation  excited  by  the 
Rye  House  Plot  was  extended  for  a  time  to  Seventy  of 

.  the  govern- 

the  whole  Whig  body.  The  Ivmg  was  now  ment. 
at  liberty  to  exact  full  vengeance  for  years  of  restraint 
and  humiliation.  Shaftesbury,  indeed,  had  escaped  the 
fate  which  his  manifold  perfidy  had  well  deserved.  He 
had  seen  that  the  ruin  of  his  party  was  at  hand,  had 
in  vain  endeavoured  to  make  his  peace  with  the  royal 
brothers,  had  fled  to  Holland,  and  had  died  there,  under 
the  generous  protection  of  a  government  which  he  had 
cruelly  wron<red.  Monmouth  threw  himself  at  his 
father's  feet  and  found  mercy,  but  soon  gave.new  offence, 
and  thought  it  jirudent  to  go  into  voluntary  exile.  Essex 
perished  bv  his  own  hand  in  the  Tower      Russell,  who 


296  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  IL 

appears  to  liave  been  guilty  of  no  offence  falling  witliin 
the  definition  of  high  treason,  and  Sidney,  of  whose  guilt 
no  legal  evidence  could  be  produced,  Avere  beheaded  in 
defiance  of  law  and  justice.  Russell  died  with  the  forti- 
tude of  a  Christian,  Sidney  with  the  fortitude  of  a  Stoic. 
Some  active  politicians  of  meaner  rank  were  sent  to  the 
gallows.  Many  quitted  the  country.  Numerous  prose- 
cutions for  mispnsion  of  treason,  for  libel,  and  for  con- 
spiracy were  instituted.  Convictions  were  obtained 
without  diflSculty  from  Tory  juries,  and  rigorous  pun- 
ishments were  inflicted  by  courtly  judges.  With  these 
criminal  proceedings  were  johied  civil  jDroceedings 
scarcely  less  formidable.  Actions  were  brought  against 
persons  who  had  defamed  the  Duke  of  York  ;  and  dam- 
ages tantamount  to  a  sentence  of  perpetual  imprison- 
ment were  demanded  by  the  plaintiff,  and  Avithout 
difficulty  obtained.  The  Court  of  King's  Bench  pro- 
nounced that  the  franchises  of  the  City  of  London  were 
Seizure  of  forfeited  to  the  crown.  Flushed  with  this 
charters.  gi'eat  victory,  the  government  proceeded  to 
attack  tJie  constitutions  of. other  corporations  which 
were  cpoverned  bv  Whio;  officers,  and  which  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  returnino;  Whio;  members  to  Parliament. 
Borough  after  borough  was  compelled  to  surrender  its 
privileges  ;  and  new  charters  wei'e  granted  which  gave 
the  ascendency  everywhere  to  the  Tories. 

These  proceedings,  however  reprehensible,  had  yet 
the  semblance  of  legality.  They  were  also  accompanied 
by  an  act  intended  to  quiet  the  uneasiness  with  which 
many  loyal  men  looked  forward  to  the  accession  of  a 
popish  sovereign.  The  Lady  Anne,  younger  daughter 
of  the  Duke  of  York  by  his  first  wife,  was  married  to 
George,  a  prince  of  the  orthodox  House  of  Denmark. 
The  Tory  gentry  and  clergy  might  now  flatter  them- 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER    CHARLES    THE    SECOND.  207 

selves  that  the  Churcli  of  Enoland  had  been  eftectually 
secured  without  any  violation  of  the  order  of  succession. 
The  King  and  the  heir  presumptive  were  nearly  of  the 
same  ao-e.  Both  were  aj^proaching  the  decline  of  life. 
The  King's  health  was  good.  It  was  therefore  probable 
that  James,  if  he  ever  came  to  the  throne,  would  have 
but  a  short  reign.  Beyond  his  reign  there  was  the 
gratifying  prospect  of  a  long  series  of  Protestant  sov- 


ereigns. 


The  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing  was  of  little  or 
no  use  to  the  vanquished  party ;  for  the  temper  of 
judges  and  juries  was  such  that  no  writer  whom  the 
govennnent  prosecuted  for  a  libel  had  any  chance  of 
escaping.  The  dread  of  punishment  therefore  did  all 
that  a  censorship  could  have  done.  Meanwhile,  the 
pulpits  resounded  with  harangues  against  the  sin  of 
rebellion.  The  treatises  in  which  Filmer  maintained 
that  hereditary  des])otism  was  the  form  of  government 
ordained  by  God,  and  that  limited  monarchy  was  a  per- 
nicious absurdity,  had  i-ecently  appeared,  and  had  been 
favourably  received  by  a  large  section  of  the  Tory 
party.  The  University  of  Oxford,  on  the  very  day  on 
which  Russell  was  put  to  death,  adopted  by  a  solemn 
public  act  these  strange  doctrines,  and  ordered  the 
political  works  of  Buchanan,  Milton,  and  Baxter  to  be 
publicly  burned  in  the  court  of  the  Schools. 

Thus  emboldened,  the  Kinji  at  lenoth  ventured  to 
overstep  the  bounds  which  he  had  during  some  years 
observed,  and  to  violate  the  plain  letter  of  the  law. 
The  law  was  that  not  more  than  three  years  should  pass 
between  the  dissolving  of  one  Parliament  and  the  con- 
voking of  another.  But,  when  three  years  had  elapsed 
after  the  dissolution  of  the  Parliament  which  sate  at 
Oxford,  no  writs  were  issued  for  an  election.  This  in- 
fi'action  of  the  constitution  was  the  more  reprehensible, 


298  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

because  tlie  King  had  little  reason  to  fear  a  meeting 
with  a  new  House  of  Commons.  The  counties  were 
generally  on  his  side  ;  and  many  boroughs  in  which  the 
Whigs  had  lately  held  sway  had  been  so  remodelled 
that  they  were  certain  to  return  none  but  courtiers. 

In  a  short  time  the  law  was  again  violated  in  order 
Influence  of   to  gratify  the  Duke  of  York,     That  prince 

the  Duke  of  "^ ,  ^ 

York.  was,  partly  on  account  of  his   religion,  and 

partly  on  account  of  the  sternness  and  harshness  of  his 
nature,  so  unpopular  that  it  had  been  thought  neces- 
sary to  keep  him  out  of  sight  while  the  Exclusion 
Bill  was  before  Parliament,  lest  his  public  appear- 
ance should  give  an  advantage  to  the  party  which  was 
struggling  to  deprive  him  of  his  birthright.  He  had 
therefore  been  sent  to  govern  Scotland,  where  the  sav- 
age old  tyrant  Lauderdale  was  sinking  into  the  grave. 
Even  Lauderdale  was  now  outdone.  The  administra- 
tion of  James  was  marked  by  odious  laws,  by  barbar- 
ous punishments,  and  by  judgments  to  the  iniquity  of 
which  even  that  age  furnished  no  parallel.  The  Scottish 
Privy  Council  had  power  to  put  state  prisoners  to  the 
question.  But  the  sight  was  so  dreadful  that,  as  soon 
as  the  boots  appeared,  even  the  most  servile  and  hard- 
hearted courtiers  hastened  out  of  the  chamber.  The 
board  was  sometimes  quite  deserted :  and  it  was  at 
length  found  necessary  to  make  an  order  that  the  mem- 
bers should  keep  their  seats  on  such  occasions.  The 
Duke  of  York,  it  was  remarked,  seemed  to  take  pleasure 
in  the  spectacle  which  some  of  the  worst  men  then  liv- 
ing were  unable  to  contemplate  without  pity  and  horror. 
He  not  only  came  to  Council  when  the  torture  was  to 
be  inflicted,  but  watched  the  agonies  of  the  sufferers 
with  that  sort  of  interest  and  complacency  with  which 
men  observe  a  curious  experiment  in  science.     Thua 


Ch.  ii.)  under  chaeles  the  second.  299 

he  employed  himself  at  Edhiburoh,  till  the  event  of 
the  conflict  between  the  court  and  the  Whigs  was  no 
longer  doubtful.  He  then  returned  to  England  :  but 
he  was  still  excluded  by  the  Test  Act  from  all  public 
employment ;  nor  did  the  King  at  first  think  it  safe  to 
violate  a  statute  which  the  great  majority  of  his  most 
loyal  subjects  regarded  as  one  of  the  chief  securities  of 
their  religion  and  of  their  civil  rights.  When,  how- 
ever, it  appeared,  from  a  succession  of  trials,  tliat  the 
nation  had  })atience  to  endure  almost  anything  that  the 
government  had  courage  to  do,  Charles  ventured  to 
dispense  with  the  law  in  his  brother's  favour.  The 
Duke  again  took  his  seat  in  the  Council,  and  resumed 
the  direction  of  naval  affairs. 

These  breaches  of  the  constitution  excited,  it  is  true, 
some  murmurs  amono;  the  moderate  Tories,   iieisop- 

.      =  posed  by 

and  were  not  unanunously  approved  even  by  iLUif^ix. 
the  King's  ministers.  Halifax  in  particular,  now  a 
Marquess  and  Lord  Privy  Seal,  had,  from  the  very  day 
on  which  the  Tories  had  by  his  helj)  gained  the  ascend- 
ant, begun  to  turn  Whig.  As  soon  as  the  Exclusion 
Bill  had  been  thrown  out,  he  had  pressed  the  House  of 
Lords  to  make  })rovision  against  the  danger  to  which,  in 
the  next  reio-n,  the  liberties  and  religion  of  tl^e  nation 
miglit  be  exposed.  He  now  saw  with  alarm  the  vit)- 
lence  of  that  reaction  which  was,  in  no  small  measure, 
his  own  work.  He  did  not  try  to  conceal  the  scorn 
which  he  felt  for  the  servile  doctrines  of  the  University 
of  Oxford.  He  detested  the  French  alliance.  He  dis- 
>ipj)r()ved  ofnhe  long  intermission  of  Parliaments.  He 
regretted  the  severity  with  which  the  vanquished  i)arty 
was  treated.  He  who,  when  the  Wln'gs  were  predomi- 
nant, had  ventured  to  pronounce  Stafford  not  guilty, 
ventured,  when  they  were  vanquished  and  helpless,  to 


300  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II 

intercede  for  Russell.  At  one  of  the  last  councils  which 
Charles  held  a  remarkable  scene  took  place.  The  char- 
ter of  Massachusetts  had  been  forfeited.  A  question 
arose  how,  for  the  future,  the  colony  should  be  gov- 
erned. The  general  opinion  of  the  board  was  that  the 
whole  power,  legislative  as  well  as  executive,  should 
abide  in  the  crown.  Halifax  took  the  opposite  side,  and 
argued  with  great  energy  against  absolute  monarchy, 
and  in  favour  of  representative  government.  It  was 
vain,  he  said,  to  think  that  a  population,  sprung  from 
the  English  stock,  and  animated  by  English  feelings, 
would  long  bear  to  be  deprived  of  English  institutions. 
Life,  he  exclaimed,  would  not  be  worth  having  in  a 
country  where  liberty  and  property  were  at  the  mercy 
of  one  despotic  master.  The  Duke  of  York  was  greatly 
incensed  by  this  language,  and  represented  to  his  brother 
the  danger  of  retaining  in  office  a  man  who  ap])eared  to 
be  infected  with  all  the  worst  notions  of  Marvell  and 
Sidney. 

Some  modern  writers  have  blamed  Halifax  for  con- 
tinuing in  the  ministry  while  he  disapproved  of  the 
manner  in  wdiich  both  domestic  and  foreign  affairs  were 
conducted.  But  this  censure  is  unjust.  Indeed  it  is 
to  be  remarked  that  the  word  ministry,  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  use  it,  was  then  unknown.^  The  thing 
itself  did  not  exist ;  for  it  belongs  to  an  age  in  which 
parliamentary  government  is  fully  established.  At 
present  the  chief  servants  of  the  crown  form  one  body. 
They  are  understood  to  be  on  terms  of  friendly  con- 
fidence with  each  other,  and  to  agree  as  [o  the  main 
principles  on  which  the  executive  administration  ought 
to  be  conducted.  If  a  slight  difference  of  opinion  arises 
among  them,  it  is  easily  compi'omised  :   but,  if  one  of 

'  North's  Examen,  69. 


Cb.  II. J  UNDER   CHARLES  THE   SECOND.  301 

them  differs  from  the  rest  on  a  vital  point,  it  is  his 
duty  to  resimi.  While  he  retains  his  office,  he  is  held 
responsible  even  for  steps  which  he  has  tried  to  dis- 
suade his  colleagues  from  taking.  In  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  heads  of  the  various  branches  of  the  ad- 
ministration were  bound  together  in  no  such  partnership. 
Each  of  them  was  accountable  for  his  own  acts,  for  the 
use  which  he  made  of  his  own  official  seal,  for  the  docu- 
ments which  he  signed,  for  the  counsel  which  he  gave 
to  the  Kinff.  No  statesman  was  held  answerable  for 
what  he  had  not  himself  done,  or  induced  others  to  do. 
If  he  took  care  not  to  be  the  agent  in  what  was  wrong, 
and  if,  when  consulted,  he  recommended  what  was 
right,  he  was  blameless.  It  would  have  been  thought 
strange  scrui)ulosity  in  him  to  quit  his  post,  because  his 
advice  as  to  matters  not  strictly  within  his  own  depart- 
ment was  not  taken  by  his  master  ;  to  leave  the  board 
of  Admiralty,  for  example,  because  the  finances  were 
in  disorder,  or  the  board  of  Treasury  because  the  for- 
eimi  relations  of  the  kino-dom  were  in  an  unsatisfactory 
state.  It  was,  therefore,  by  no  means  unusual  to  see 
in  high  office,  at  the  same  time,  men  who  avowedly  dif- 
fered from  one  another  as  widely  as  ever  Pulteney  dif- 
fered from  Walpole,  or  Fox  from  Pitt. 

The  moderate  and  constitutional  counsels  of  Halifax 
were  timidly  and  feebly  seconded  by  Francis  j^^^,, 
North,  Lord  Guildford,  who  had  kitely  been  """J^"!- 
made  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal.  The  chai'acter  of 
Guildford  has  been  drawn  at  full  length  bv  his  brother 
Roger  North,  a  most  intolerant  Tory,  a  most  affected 
and  pedantic  writer,  but  a  vigilant  observer  of  all  those 
minute  circumstances  which  throw  light  on  the  disposi- 
tions of  men.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  biogra})her, 
though   he  was   under  the  influence  of  the   strongest 


302  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  II. 

fraternal  partiality,  and  though  he  was  evidently  anx- 
ious to  produce  a  flattering  likeness,  was  yet  unable  to 
portray  the  Lord  Keeper  otherwise  than  as  the  most 
icrnoble  of  mankind.  Yet  the  intellect  of  Guildford 
was  clear,  his  industry  great,  his  proficiency  in  letters 
and  science  respectable,  and  his  legal  learning  more 
than  respectable.  His  faults  were  selfishness,  coward- 
ice, and  meanness.  He  was  not  insensible  to  the  power 
of  female  beauty,  nor  averse  ft-om  excess  in  wine.  Yet 
neither  wine  nor  beauty  could  ever  seduce  the  cautious 
and  frugal  libertine,  even  in  his  earliest  youth,  into  one 
fit  of  indiscreet  generosity.  Though  of  noble  descent, 
he  rose  in  his  profession  by  paying  ignominious  homage 
to  all  who  possessed  influence  in  the  courts.  He  be- 
came Chief  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas,  and  as  such 
was  party  to  some  of  the  foulest  judicial  murders  re- 
corded in  our  history.  He  had  sense  enough  to  per- 
ceive from  the  first  that  Gates  and  Bedloe  were  impos- 
tors :  but  the  Parliament  and  the  country  were  greatly 
excited;  the  government  had  yielded  to  the  pressure  ; 
and  North  was  not  a  man  to  risk  a  good  place  for  the 
sake  of  justice  and  humanity.  Accordingly,  while  he 
was  in  secret  drawing  up  a  refutation  of  the  whole 
romance  of  the  Popish  plot,  he  declared  in  public  that 
the  truth  of  the  story  was  as  plain  as  the  sun  in  heaven, 
and  was  not  ashamed  to  browbeat,  from  the  seat  of 
judgment,  the  unfortunate  Roman  Catholics  who  were 
arraio-ned  before  him  for  their  lives.  He  had  at  length 
reached  the  highest  post  in  the  law.  But  a  lawyer, 
who,  after  many  years  devoted  to  professional  labour, 
engages  in  politics  for  the  first  time  at  an  advanced 
period  of  life,  seldom  distinguishes  himself  as  a  states- 
man, and  Guildford  was  no  exception  to  the  general 
rule.      He   was  indeed  so  sensible  of  his    deficiencies 


Ch.  II.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  303 

tliat  he  never  attended  the  meetings  of  his  colleagues 
on  foreign  affairs^  Even  on  questions  relating  to  his 
own  profession  his  opinion  had  less  weight  at  the 
Council  board  than  that  of  any  man  who  has  ever  held 
the  Great  Seal.  Such  as  his  influence  was,  however, 
he  used  it,  as  far  as  he  dared,  on  the  side  of  the  laws. 

The  chief  opponent  of  Halifax  was  Lawrence  Hyde, 
who  had  recently  been  created  Earl  of  Rochester.  Of 
all  Tories,  Rochester  was  the  most  intolerant  and  un- 
compromising. The  moderate  members  of  his  party- 
complained  that  the  whole  pati'onage  of  the  Treasury, 
while  he  was  First  Commissioner  there,  went  to  noisy 
zealots,  whose  only  claim  to  promotion  was  that  they 
wei'e  always  drinking  confusion  to  Whiggery,  and 
lighting  bonfires  to  burn  the  Exclusion  Bill.  The  Duke 
of  York,  pleased  with  a  s[)irit  which  so  much  resembled 
his  own,  supported  his  brother  in  law  passionately  and 
obstinately. 

The  attemj)ts  of  the  rival  ministers  to  surmount  and 
su])plant  each  other  kept  the  court  in  incessant  agita- 
tion. Halifax  pressed  the  King  to  summon  a  ParHa- 
ment,  to  grant  a  general  amnesty,  to  deprive  the  Duke 
of  York  of  all  share  in  the  government,  to  recall  Mon- 
mouth from  banishment,  to  break  with  Lewis,  and  to 
form  a  close  union  with  Holland  on  the  principles  of 
the  Triple  Alhance.  The  Duke  of  York,  on  the  other 
hand,  dreaded  tlie  meeting  of  a  Parliament,  regarded 
the  vanquislied  Whigs  with  undiminished  hatred,  still 
flattered  himself  that  the  design  formed  fourteen  years 
before  at  Dover  might  be  accomplished,  daily  repre- 
sented to  his  brother  the  impropriety  of  suffering  one 
who  was  at  heart  a  Republican  to  hold  the  Privy  Seal, 
and  strongly  recommended  Rochester  for  the  great 
place  of  T^ord  Treasurer. 


304  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  H. 

While  the  two  factions  were  struggling,  Godolphin, 
cautious,  silent,  and  laborious,  observed  a  neutrality 
between  them.  Sunderland,  with  his  usual  restless 
perfidy,  intrigued  against  them  both.  He  had  been 
turned  out  of  office  in  disgrace  for  having  voted  in 
favour  of  the  Exclusion  Bill,  but  had  made  his  peace 
by  employing  the  good  offices  of  the  Duchess  of  Ports- 
mouth and  by  cringing  to  the  Duke  of  York,  and  was 
once  more  Secretary  of  State. 

Nor  was  Lewis  neo-liffent  nr  inactive.  Every  thing 
Policy  of  ^t  t^^t  moment  favoured  his  designs.  He  had 
"^'"^"  nothing  to  apprehend  from  the  German  em- 

pire, which  was  then  contending  against  the  Turks 
on  the  Danube.  Holland  could  not,  unsupported,  ven- 
ture to  op})Ose  him.  He  was  therefore  at  liberty  to 
indulge  his  ambition  and  insolence  without  restraint. 
He  seized  Strasburg,  Courtray,  Luxemburg.  He  ex- 
acted from  the  republic  of  Genoa  the  most  humiliat- 
uicT  submissions.  The  power  of  France  at  that  time 
reached  a  higher  point  than  it  ever  before  or  ever  after 
attained,  during  the  ten  centuries  which  separated  the 
reign  of  Charlemagne  and  the  reign  of  Napoleon.  It 
was  not  easy  to  say  where  her  acquisitions  would  stop, 
if  only  England  could  be  kept  in  a  state  of  vassalage. 
The  first  object  of  the  court  of  Versailles  was  there- 
fore to  ])revent  the  calling  of  a  Parliament  and  the 
reconciliation  of  English  parties.  For  this  end  bribes, 
promises,  and  menaces  were  unsparingly  employed. 
Charles  was  sometimes  allured  by  the  hope  of  a  sub- 
sidy, and  sometimes  frightened  by  being  told  that,  if 
he  convoked  the  Houses,  the  secret  articles  of  the 
treaty  of  Dover  should  be  published.  Several  Privy 
Councillors  were  bought ;  and  attempts  were  made  to 
buy  Halifax,  but  in  vain.     When  he  had  been  found 


Ch.  n.]  UNDER   CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  305 

incorruptible,  all  the  art  and  influence  of  the  French 
embassy  were  employed  to  drive  him  from  office  :  but 
his  polished  wit  and  his  various  accomj)lishraents  had 
made  him  so  agreeable  to  his  master,  that  the  design 
failed.^ 

Halifax  was  not  content  with  standing  on  the  defen- 
sive. He  openly  accused  Rochester  of  malversation. 
An  inquiry  took  place.  It  appeared  that  forty  thou- 
sand pounds  had  been  lost  to  the  i)ublic  by  the  mis- 
management of  the  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury.  In 
consequence  of  this  discovery  he  was  not  only  forced 
to  relinquish  his  hopes  of  the  white  staff,  but  was  re- 
moved from  the  direction  of  the  finances  to  the  more 
dignified  but  less  lucrative  and  important  post  of  Lord 
President.  "  I  have  seen  people  kicked  down  stairs 
before,"  said  Halifax  ;  "  but  my  Lord  Rochester  is  the 
first  person  that  I  ever  saw  kicked  up  stairs."  Go- 
dolphin,  now  a  peer,  became  First  Commissioner  of  the 
Treasury. 

Still,  however,  the   contest  continued.     The   event 
depended  wholly  on  the  will  of  Charles  ;  and  state  of  fac- 
Charles  could  not  come   to  a  decision.     In   co^t'oV"'* 
his    ])erplexity   he    promised    everything    to  [i|e'j|uteof 
everybody.     He  would  stand  by  France  :  he   ^'^  '^'"'^^• 
would  break  with  France :  he  would  never  meet  an- 
other Parliament :  ho    would  order   writs   for  a  Par- 


1  Lord  Preston,  who  was  envoy  at  Paris,  wrote  thence  to  Halifax  as  fol- 
lows:—  "  I  find  tliat  Vdiir  lonUliip  lies  still  under  the  same  niisAirtune  of 
beinj;  no  favourite  to  this  lourt;  and  Monsieur  Barillun  dare  not  do  j-on  the 
honour  to  shine  upon  you,  since  his  master  frowneth.  They  know  very 
well  your  lordsliip's  (lualilieations.  which  make  them  fear  and  consequently 
hate  you :  and  lie  assured,  my  lord,  if  ail  their  strenf^th  can  send  you  to 
KulVord,  it  shall  be  employed  for  that  end.  Two  thinjis,  I  hear,  they  jiar- 
licularly  object  against  you,  your  secrecy,  and  your  being  incajiable  of 
\)eing  corrupted.  .Against  these  two  things  I  know  they  have  declared." 
The  date  of  the  letter  is  October  5.  n.  s.  1G83. 
VOL.  I.  20 


306  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IL 

lianient  to  be  issued  witliout  delay.  He  assured  the 
Duke  of  York  that  Halifax  should  be  dismissed  from 
office,  and  Hahfax  that  the  Duke  should  be  sent  to 
Scotland.  In  public  he  affected  implacable  resentment 
against  Monmouth,  and  in  private  conveyed  to  Mon- 
moiTth  assurances  of  unalterable  affection.  How  long, 
if  the  King's  life  had  been  protracted,  his  hesitation 
mioht  have  lasted,  and  what  would  have  been  his  re- 
solve,  can  only  be  conjectured.  Early  in  the  year 
1685,  while  hostile  parties  were  anxiously  awaiting  his 
determination,  he  died,  and  a  new  scene  opened.  In  a 
few  months  the  excesses  of  the  government  obliterated 
the  impression  which  had  been  made  on  the  public 
mind  by  the  excesses  of  the  opposition.  The  violent 
reaction  which  had  laid  the  Whig  party  prostrate  was 
followed  by  a  still  more  violent  reaction  in  the  opposite 
direction  ;  and  signs  not  to  be  mistaken  indicated  that 
the  great  conflict  between  the  prerogatives  of  the 
crown  and  the  privileges  of  the  Parliament,  was  about 
to  be  brought  to  a  final  issue. 


Ch.  IIl.l  STATE  OP  ENGLAND   IN   1685.  307 


CHAPTER  III. 

I  INTEND,  in  tliis  chapter,  to  give  a  description  of  tlie 
state  in  which  Enoland  was  at  the  time  when  the  crown 
passed  from  Charles  the  Second  to  his  brother.  Such 
a  description,  composed  from  scanty  and  dispersed  ma- 
terials, must  necessarily  be  very  imperfect.  Yet  it 
may  perhaps  correct  some  false  notions  which  would 
make  the  subsequent  narrative  unintelligible  or  unin- 
structive. 

If  we  would  study  with  profit  the  history  of  our  an- 
cestors, we  must  be  constantly  on  our  guard  against 
that  delusion  which  the  well  known  names  of  families, 
places,  and  offices  naturally  produce,  and  must  never 
forget  that  the  country  of  which  we  read  was  a  very 
different  country  from  that  in  which  we  live.  In  every 
experimental  science  there  is  a  tendency  towards  per- 
fection. In  every  human  being  there  is  a  wish  to  amel- 
iorate his  own  condition.  These  two  principles  have 
often  sufficed,  even  when  counteracted  by  great  public 
calamities  and  by  bad  institutions,  to  carry  civilisation 
rapidly  forward.  No  ordinaiy  misfortune,  no  ordi- 
nary misgovernment,  will  do  so  much  to  make  a  nation 
wretched,  as  the  constant  progress  of  physical  knowl- 
edge and  the  constant  effort  of  every  man  to  better 
himself  will  do  to  make  a  nation  prosperous.  It  has 
often  been  found  that  profuse  expenditure,  heavy  taxa- 
tion, absurd  commercial  restrictions,  corrupt  tribunals, 
disastrous  wars,  seditions,  persecutions,  conflagrations, 
inundations,  have  not  been  aljle  to  destroy  capital  so 


308  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IU. 

fast  as  the  exertions  of  private  citizens  have  been  able 
to  create  it.  It  can  easily  be  proved  that,  in  our  own 
land,  the  national  wealth  has,  during  at  least  six  cen- 
turies, been  almost  uninterruptedly  increasing  ;  that  it 
was  greater  under  the  Tudors  than  under  the  Plan- 
tagenets  ;  that  it  was  greater  under  the  Stuarts  than 
under  the  Tudors ;  that,  in  spite  of  battles,  sieges,  and 
confiscations,  it  was  greater  on  the  day  of  the  Resto- 
ration than  on  the  day  when  the  Long  Parliament 
met ;  that,  in  spite  of  maladministration,  of  extrava- 
gance, of  public  bankruptcy,  of  two  costly  and  unsuc- 
cessful wars,  of  the  pestilence  and  of  the  fire,  it  was 
greater  on  the  day  of  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second 
than  on  the  day  of  his  Restoration.  This  progress, 
having  continued  during  many  ages,  became  at  length, 
about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  porten- 
tously rapid,  and  has  proceeded,  during  the  nineteenth, 
with  accelerated  velocity.  In  consequence  partly  of 
our  geographical  and  partly  of  our  moral  position,  we 
have,  during  several  generations,  been  exempt  from 
evils  which  have  elsewhere  impeded  the  efforts  and  de- 
stroyed the  fruits  of  industry.  While  every  part  of  the 
Continent,  from  Moscow  to  Lisbon,  has  been  the  theatre 
of  bloody  and  devastating  Avars,  no  hostile  standard  has 
been  seen  here  but  as  a  trophy.  While  revolutions 
have  taken  place  all  around  us,  our  government  has 
never  once  been  subverted  by  violence.  During  more 
than  a  hundred  years  there  has'  been  in  our  island  no 
tumult  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  called  an  insurrec- 
tion ;  nor  has  the  law  been  once  borne  down  either  by 
po])ular  fury  or  by  regal  tyranny  :  public  credit  has  been 
held  sacred:  the  administration  of  justice  has  been  pure: 
even  in  times  which  might  by  Englishmen  be  justly 
called  evil  times,  we  have  enjoyed  what  almost  every 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  309 

other  nation  in  the  world  would  have  considered  as  an 
ample  measure  of  civil  and  religious  freedom.     Every 
man  has  felt  entire  confidence  that  the  state  would  pro- 
tect him  in  the  possession  of  what  had  been  earned  by 
his  diligence  and  hoarded  by  his  selfdenial.     Under  the 
benignant  influence  of  peace  and  liberty,  science  has 
flourished,  and  has  been  applied  to  practical  purposes 
on  a  scale  never  before  known.     The  conse-  Great  change 
quence  is  that  a  change  to  which  the  history  o'TEngfand 
of  the  old  world  furnishes  no  parallel  has  taken  ^"^'^^  ^^' 
place  in  our  country.     Could  the  England  of  1685  be, 
by  some  magical  process,  set  before  our  eyes,  we  should 
not  know  one  landscape  in  a  hundred  or  one  building 
in  ten  thousand.     The  country  gentleman  would  not 
recoo-nise  his  own  fields.     The  inhabitant  of  the  town 
would  not  recognise  his  own  street.     Everything  has 
been  changed,  but  the  great  features  of  nature,  and  a 
few  massive  and  durable  works  of  human  art.     We 
might  find  out  Snowdon  and  Windermere,  the  Cheddar 
Cliffs  and  Bcachy  Head.     We  might  find  out  here  and 
there  a  Norman  minster,  or  a  castle  which  witnessed 
the  wars  of  the  Roses.     But,  with  such  rare  excep- 
tions, everything  would  be  strange  to  us.     Many  thou- 
sands of  square  miles  which  are  now  I'ich  com  land 
and   meadow,   intersected    by   green   hedgerows,    and 
dotted  with  villages  and  pleasant  country  seats,  would 
appear  as  moors  overgrown  with  furze,  or  fens  aban- 
doned to  wild  ducks.     We  should  see  straggling  huts 
built  of  wood  and  covered  with  thatch,  where  we  now 
see  manufacturing  towns  and  seaports  renowned  to  the 
farthest  ends  of  the  world.     The  capital  itself  would 
shrink  to  dimensions  not  much  exceeding  those  of  its 
present  suburb  on  the  south  of  the  Thames.     Not  less 
strange  to  us  would  be  the  garb  and  manners  of  the 


810  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

people,  the  furniture  and  the  equipages,  the  interior  of 
the  shops  and  dwelKngs.  Such  a  change  in  the  state 
of  a  nation  seems  to  be  at  least  as  well  entitled  to  the 
notice  of  a  historian  as  any  change  of  the  dynasty  or  of 
the  ministry. 

One  of  the  first  objects  of  an  inquirer,  who  wishes  to 
Population     fbmi  a  corrcct  notion  of  the  state  of  a  com- 

ofEuglai.d  ... 

in  1685.  munity  at  a  given  time,  must  be  to  ascertain 
of  how  many  persons  that  community  then  consisted. 
Unfortunately  the  population  of  England  in  1685  can 
not  be  ascertained  with  perfect  accuracy.  For  no  great 
state  had  then  adopted  the  wise  course  of  periodically 
numbering  the  people.  All  men  were  left  to  conject- 
ure for  themselves  ;  and,  as  they  generally  conjectured 
without  examining  facts,  and  under  the  influence  of 
strong  passions  and  prejudices,  their  guesses  were  often 
ludicrously  absurd.  Even  intelligent  Londoners  ordi- 
narily talked  of  London  as  containing  several  millions  of 
souls.  It  was  confidently  asserted  by  man}'-  that,  dur- 
ing the  thirty-five  years  which  had  elapsed  between  the 
accession  of  Charles  the  First  and  the  Restoration,  the 
population  of  the  city  had  increased  by  two  millions.^ 
Even  while  the  ravages  of  the  plague  and  fire  were 
recent,  it  was  the  fashion  to  say  that  the  capital  still 
had  a  million  and  a  half  of  inhabitants.'"^  Some  per- 
sons, disgusted  by  these  exaggerations,  ran  violently 
into  the  opposite  extreme.  Thus  Isaac  Vossius,  a 
man  of  undoubted  parts  and  learning,  strenuously 
maintained  that  there  were  only  two  millions  of  hu- 

1  Observations  on  the  Bills  of  Mortality,  by  Captain  John  Graunt  (Sil 
William  Petty),  chap.  xi. 

'■^  "  Slxe  doth  comprehend 

Full  fifteeu  hnmlred  thousand  which  do  spend 
Their  days  witliiu." 

Groat  Britain's  Beauty,  1671. 


Cir.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  311 

man  beings  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland  taken 
together.^ 

We  are  not,  however,  left  without  the  means  of  cor- 
rectiniJ:  the  wild  blunders  into  which  some  minds  were 
hurried  by  national  vanity  and  others  by  a  morbid  love 
of  paradox.  There  are  extant  three  computations  which 
seem  to  be  entitled  to  y)eculiar  attention.  Tliey  are 
entirely  independent  of  each  other :  they  proceed  on 
different  principles  ;  and  yet  there  is  little  difference  in 
the  results. 

One  of  these  computations  was  made  in  the  year  1696 
by  Gregory  King,  Lancaster  herald,  a  political  arithme- 
tician of  great  acuteness  and  judgment.  The  basis  of 
his  calculations  was  the  number  of  houses  returned  in 
1690  by  the  officers  who  made  the  last  collection  of  the 
hearth  money.  The  conclusion  at  which  he  arrived  was 
that  the  population  of  England  was  nearly  five  millions 
and  a  half.'^ 

About  the  same  time  Kino;  William  the  Tliird  was 
desirous  to  ascertain  the  comparative  strength  of  the 
religious  sects  into  which  the  community  was  divided. 
An  inquiry  was  instituted  ;  and  reports  were  laid  before 
him  from  all  the  dioceses  of  the  realm.  Accordino;  to 
these  reports  the  number  of  his  English  subjects  must 
have  been  about  five  million  two  hundred  thousand.^ 

Lastly,  in  our  own  days,  Mr.  Finlaison,  an  actuary  of 

1  Isaac  Vossius,  l)e  Magnitudiiie  Urbium  Sinarum,  1C85.  Vossius,  as  we 
learn  from  St.  E\roiiiiiM(l,  talked  on  this  suhji'ct  ol'tuiier  and  longer  tliau 
fashionable  circles  cared  to  li.sten. 

■•^  King's  Natural  and  Political  Observation.s,  169(5.  This  valuable  trea- 
tise, which  ought  to  be  read  as  the  author  wrote  it,  and  not  as  garbled  by 
Davcnant,  will  be  tbund  in  some  editions  of  Chalincrs's  I'.stimate. 

"  Dali-ymple's  Appendix  to  Part  II.  Book  I.  The  practice  of  reckoning 
the  pf)pulation  by  sects  was  long  fashionable.  Gulliver  says  of  the  King 
of  I?robdiiign;ig,  "  He  laughed  at  my  odd  arithmetic,  as  he  was  pleased  to 
call  it,  in  reckoning  the  numbers  of  our  ]KM)ple  hy  a  computation  drawn  from 
the  several  sects  among  us  in  religion  and  politics." 


312  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

eminent  skill,  subjected  the  ancient  pai'ochial  registers 
of  baptisms,  marriages  and  burials  to  all  the  tests  which 
the  modern  improvements  in  statistical  science  enabled 
him  to  api)ly.  His  opinion  was,  that,  at  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  population  of  England  Avas  a 
little  under  five  million  two  hundred  thousand  souls.^ 

Of  these  three  estimates,  framed  without  concert  by- 
different  persons  from  different  sets  of  materials,  the 
highest,  which  is  that  of  King,  does  not  exceed  the 
lowest,  which  is  that  of  Finlaison,  by  one  twelfth.  We 
may,  therefore,  with  confidence  pronounce  that,  when 
James  the  Second  reigned,  England  contained  between 
five  million  and  five  million  five  hundred  thousand  in- 
habitants. On  the  very  highest  supposition  she  then 
had  less  than  one  third  of  her  present  population,  and 
less  than  three  times  the  population  which  is  now  col- 
lected in  her  gigantic  capital. 

The  increase  of  the  people  has  been  great  in  every 
,     part    of  the    kingdom,   but   generally    much 

Increase  of       r  e^  '  r>^  •> 

population      o-reater  in  the  northern  than  in  the  southern 

greater  mo  n     ^ 

the  north       sliircs.     In  truth  a  large  part  of  the  countiy 

than  lu  the  i  i  •    i  i 

wuth.  beyond  Trent  was,  down  to  the  eighteenth 

century,  in  a  state  of  barbarism.  Physical  and  moral 
causes  had  concurred  to  prevent  civilisation  from  spread- 
ing to  that  region.  The  air  was  inclement ;  the  soil 
was  generally  such  as  required  skilful  and  industrious 
cultivation  ;  and  there  could  be  little  skill  or  industry 
in  a  tract  which  was  often  the  theatre  of  war,  and  which, 
even  when  there  was  nominal  peace,  was  constantly 
desolated  by  bands  of  Scottish  marauders.  Before  the 
union  of  the  two  British  crowns,  and  long  after  that 
union,  there  was  as  great  a  difference  between  Middle- 
sex and  Northumberland  as  there  now  is  between  Mas- 

1  Preface  to  the  Population  Returns  of  1831. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  313 

sachiisetts  and  the  settlements  of  those  squatters  who, 
far  to  the  west  of  the  Mississippi,  administer  a  rude 
justice  with  the  rifle  and  the  dagger.  In  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Second,  the  traces  left  by  ages  of  slaughter 
and  pillage  were  still  distinctly  perceptible,  many  miles 
south  of  the  Tweed,  in  the  face  of  the  country  and  in 
the  lawless  manners  of  the  people.  There  was  still  a 
large  class  of  mosstroopers,  whose  calling  was  to  plunder 
dwellings  and  to  drive  away  whole  herds  of  cattle.  It 
was  found  necessary,  soon  after  the  Restoration,  to 
enact  laws  of  great  severity  for  the  prevention  of  these 
outrages.  The  magistrates  of  Northumberland  and 
Cumberland  were  authorised  to  raise  bands  of  armed 
men  for  the  defence  of  property  and  order ;  and  pro- 
vision was  made  for  meeting  the  expense  of  these  levies 
by  local  taxation.^  The  parishes  were  required  to  keep 
bloodhounds  for  the  purpose  of  hunting  the  freebooters. 
Many  old  men  who  were  living  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  could  well  remember  the  time  when 
those  ferocious  dogs  were  common.^  Yet,  even  with 
such  auxiliaries,  it  was  often  found  impossible  to  track 
the  robbers  to  their  retreats  among  the  hills  and  mo- 
rasses. For  the  geography  of  that  wild  country'-  was 
very  imperfectly  known.  Even  after  the  accession  of 
George  the  Third,  the  path  over  the  fells  from  Borrow- 
dale  to  Ravenglas  was  still  a  secret  carefully  kept  by 
the  dalesmen,  some  of  whom  had  probably  in  their 
youth  escaped  from  the  pursuit  of  justice  by  that  road.^ 
The  seats  of  the  gentry  and  the  larger  farmhouses  were 
fortified.  Oxen  were  penned  at  night  beneath  the 
overhanging  battlements  of  the  residence,  which  was 

1  Statutes  U  Car.  U.  c.  22.;  18  &  19  Car.  II.  c.  3.;  29  &  30  Car.  11.  c.  2. 

2  Nicholson  and  Bourne,  Discourse  on  the  Ancient  State  of  the  Border, 
1777. 

*  Gray's  Journal  of  a  Tour  in  tlie  Lakes,  Oct.  3.  1769. 


314  HISTORY    OF  ENGLAND.  ICii.  HI. 

known  by  the  name  of  the  Peel.  The  inmates  slept 
with  arms  at  their  sides.  Huo;e  stones  and  boiling 
water  were  in  readiness  to  crush  and  scald  the  plun- 
derer who  might  venture  to  assail  the  little  garrison. 
No  traveller  ventured  into  that  country  without  making 
his  will.  The  Judges  on  circuit,  with  the  Avhole  body 
of  barristers,  attorneys,  clerks,  and  serving  men,  rode 
on  horseback  from  Newcastle  to  Carlisle,  armed  and 
escorted  by  a  sti'ong  guard  under  the  command  of  the 
Sheriffs.  It  was  necessary  to  carry  provisions ;  for  the 
country  was  a  wilderness  which  afforded  no  supplies. 
The  spot  where  the  cavalcade  halted  to  dine,  under  an 
immense  oak,  is  not  yet  foi'gotten.  The  irregular  vigour 
with  which  criminal  justice  was  administered  shocked 
observers  whose  life  had  been  passed  in  more  tranquil 
districts.  Juries,  animated  by  hatred  and  by  a  sense 
of  common  danger,  convicted  housebreakers  and  cattle 
stealers  with  the  promptitude  of  a  court  martial  in  a 
mutiny ;  and  the  convicts  were  hurried  by  scores  to 
the  gallows.^  Within  the  memory  of  some  whom  this 
generation  has  seen,  the  sportsman  who  wandered  in 
pursuit  of  game  to  the  sources  of  the  Tyne  found  the 
heaths  round  Keeldar  Castle  peopled  by  a  race  scarcely 
less  savage  than  the  Indians  of  California,  and  heard 
with  surjn'ise  the  half  naked  women  channting  a  M'ild 
measure,  while  the  men  with  brandished  dirks  danced 
a  war  dance.^ 

Slowly  and  with  difficulty  peace  Avas  established  on 
the  border.  In  the  train  of  peace  came  industry  and 
all  the  arts  of  life.  Meanwhile  it  was  discovered  that 
the  regions  north  of  the  Trent  possessed  in  their  coal 

1  North's  Life  of  Guildford.  Hutchinson's  History  of  Cumberland,  parish 
of  Brampton. 

3  See  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Journal,  Oct.  7.  1827,  in  his  Life  by  Mr,  Lock- 
hart. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF  ENGLAND   IN    1685.  315 

beds  a  source  of  wealth  far  more  precious  than  the  gold 
mines  of  Peru.  It  was  found  that,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  these  beds,  almost  every  manufacture  miglit  be 
most  profitably  carried  on.  A  constant  stream  of  emi- 
grants began  to  roll  northward.  It  appeared  by  tin 
returns  of  1841  that  the  ancient  archiepiscopal  province 
of  York  contained  two  sevenths  of  the  population  of 
England.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolution  that  prov- 
ince was  believed  to  contain  only  one  seventh  of  the 
population. 1  In  Lancashire  the  number  of  inhabi- 
tants appears  to  have  increased  ninefold,  while  in 
Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and  Northamptonshire  it  has  hardly 
doubled.^ 

Of  the  taxation  we  can  speak  with  more  confidence 
and  precision  than   of  the  population.     The   „ 

^  r    J  Revenue  m 

revenue  of  England,  when  Cliarles  the  Second  1685. 
died,  was  small,  when  compared  witli  the  resources 
which  she  even  then  possessed,  or  with  the  sums  which 
were  raised  by  the  governments  of  the  neighbouring 
countries.  It  had,  from  the  time  of  the  Restoration, 
been  almost  constantly  increasing :  yet  it  was  little 
more  than  three  fourtlis  of  the  revenue  of  the  Unitec 
Provinces,  and  was  hardly  one  fifth  of  the  revenue  of 
France. 

The  most  important  head  of  receipt  was  the  excise, 
wliich,  in  the  last  year  of  the  reign  of  Charles,  pro- 
duced five  hundred  and  eighty-five  thousand  pounds, 
clear  of  all  deductions.     Tlie  net  proceeds  of  the  cus- 

1  Dalrymple,  Appendix  to  Part  II.  Book  I.  The  returns  of  the  hearth 
nionoy  lead  to  nearly  the  same  conclusion.  The  hearths  in  the  province 
of  York  were  not  a  sixth  of  the  hearths  of  England. 

2  I  do  not,  of  course,  pretend  to  strict  accuracy  hero;  but  I  believe  that 
whoever  will  take  tin-  trouhle  to  compare  the  last  returns  of  hearth  nuincy 
in  the  reii,^n  of  William  the  Third  with  the  census  of  1841,  will  come  to  a 
conclusion  not  verv  ditVurcnt  from  mine. 


316  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  Ill 

toms  amounted  in  the  same  year  to  five  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  pounds.  These  burdens  did  not  He 
very  heary  on  the  nation.  The  tax  on  chimneys, 
though  less  productive,  called  forth  far  louder  nuirmurs. 
The  discontent  excited  by  direct  imposts  is,  indeed, 
almost  always  out  of  proportion  to  the  quantity  of 
money  which  they  bring  into  the  Exchequer  ;  and  the 
tax  on  cliimneys  was,  even  among  direct  imposts,  pecu- 
liarly odious  :  for  it  could  be  levied  only  by  means  of 
domiciliary  visits  ;  and  of  such  visits  the  English  have 
always  been  impatient  to  a  degree  which  the  people  of 
other  countries  can  but  faintly  conceive.  The  poorer 
householders  were  frequently  unable  to  pay  their  hearth 
money  to  the  day.  When  this  happened,  their  furniture 
was  distrained  without  mercy  :  for  the  tax  was  farmed  ; 
and  a  farmer  of  taxes  is,  of  <all  creditors,  proverbially  the 
most  rapacious.  The  collectors  were  loudly  accused 
of  performing  their  unpopular  duty  with  harshness  and 
insolence.  It  was  said  that,  as  soon  as  they  appeared 
at  the  threshold  of  a  cottage,  the  children  besan  to 
wail,  and  the  old  women  ran  to  hide  their  earthen- 
ware. Nay,  the  single  •  bed  of  a  poor  family  had  some- 
times been  carried  away  and  sold.  The  net  annual  re- 
ceipt from  this  tax  was  two  hundred  thousand  pounds. ^ 

1  There  are  in  the   Pepysian  Library,  some  ballads  of  that  age  on  the 
chimney  money.     I  will  give  a  specimen  or  two:  — 

"  The  good  old  dames,  whenever  they  the  chimney  man  espied, 
Unto  their  nooks  they  haste  away,  their  pots  and  pipkins  hide. 
There  is  not  one  old  dame  in  ten,  and  search  the  nation  through, 
But,  if  you  talk  of  chimney  men,  will  spare  a  curse  or  two." 

Again, 

"  Like  plundering  soldiers  they  'd  enter  the  door, 
And  make  a  distress  on  the  goods  of  the  poor, 
While  frighted  poor  children  distractedly  cried  : 
This  nothing  abated  their  insolent  pride." 

In  the  British  Museum  there  are  doggerel  verses  composed  on  the  Sftnie 
subject  and  in  the  same  spirit: 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP  ENGLAND   IN    1685.  317 

When  to  tlie  three  great  sources  of  income  wliich 
have  been  mentioned  we  add  the  royal  domains,  then 
far  more  extensive  than  at  present,  the  first  fruits  and 
tenths,  which  had  not  yet  been  surrendered  to  the 
Chiu'ch,  the  Duchies  of  Cornwall  and  Lancaster,  the 
forfeitures  and  the  fines,  we  shall  find  that  the  whole 
annual  revenue  of  the  crown  may  be  fairly  estimated 
at  about  fourteen  hundred  thousand  pounds.  Of  this 
revenue  part  was  hereditary  :  the  rest  had  been  granted 
to  Charles  for  life  ;  and  he  was  at  liberty  to  lay  out  the 
whole  exactly  as  he  thought  fit.  Whatever  he  could 
save  by  retrenching  the  expenditure  of  the  public  de- 
partments was  an  addition  to  his  privy  purse.  Of  the 
Post  Office,  more  will  hereafter  be  said.  The  profits 
of  that  establishment  had  been  appropriated  by  Parlia- 
ment to  the  Duke  of  York. 

The  King's  revenue  was,  or  rather  ought  to  have 
been,  charged  with  the  payment  of  about  eighty  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year,  the  interest  of  the  sum  fraudu- 
lently detained  in  the  Exchequer  by  the  Cabal.  While 
Danby  was  at  the  head  of  the  finances,  the  creditors 
had  received  their  dividends,  though  not  with  the  strict 
punctuality  of  modern  times:  but  those  who  had  suc- 
ceeded him  at  the  Treasury  had  been  less  expert,  or  less 
solicitous  to  maintain  public  faith.  Since  the  victoiy 
won  by  the  court  over  the  Whios,  not  a  fartliinji  had 
been  paid  ;  and  no  redress  was  granted  to  the  sufferers, 
till  a  new  dvnastv  had  been  many  years  on  the  throne. 
There  can  be  no  greater  error  tiian  to  imagine  that  the 


"  Or.  If  through  poverty  it  be  not  paid, 
For  rrui'lty  to  tear  away  the  Kinfjle  lied, 
Ou  which  the  poor  luaii  rests  his  wenry  head, 
At  once  deprives  him  of  his  rent  and  broad." 

I  take  this  opportunity,  the  tirst  wliicli  occurs,  of  acknowledging  most 
gratefully  the  kind  ;ind  libtrai  niaiuior  in  whicli  the  .Master  and  Vicemaslef 
of  Maf^dnlene  College,  Cambridge,  gave  me  access  to  the  valuable  collec- 
tions of  Pepj's. 


318  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  ICn.  III. 

device  of  meeting  the  exigencies  of  the  state  by  loans 
was  imported  into  our  island  by  William  the  Third. 
What  really  dates  from  his  reign  is  not  the  system  of 
borrowing,  but  the  system  of  funding.  From  a  period 
of  immemorial  antiquity  it  had  been  the  practice  of 
every  English  government  to  contract  debts.  What 
the  Revolution  introduced  was  the  practice  of  honestly 
paying  them.^ 

By  plundering  the  public  creditor,  it  was  possible  to 
make  an  income  of  about  fourteen  hundred  thousand 
pounds,  with  some  occasional  help  from  France,  support 
the  necessary  charges  of  the  government  and  the  waste- 
ful expenditure  of  the  court.  For  that  load  which 
pressed  most  heavily  on  the  finances  of  the  great  con- 
tinental states  was  here  scarcely  felt.  In  France,  Ger- 
many, and  the  Netherlands,  armies,  such  as  Henry  the 
Fourth  and  Philip  the  Second  had  never  employed  in 
time  of  war,  were  kept  up  in  the  midst  of  peace.  Bas- 
tions and  ravelins  were  everywhere  rising,  constructed 
on  principles  unknown  to  rarma  or  Spinola.  Stores 
of  artillery  and  ammunition  were  accumulated,  such  as 
even  Richelieu,  whom  the  preceding  generation  had  re- 
garded as  a  worker  of  prodigies,  would  have  pronounced 
fabulous.  No  man  could  journey  many  leagues  in  those 
countries  without  hearino;  the  drums  of  a  remment  on 
march,  or  being  challenged  by  the  sentinels  on  the 
Military  sys-  drawbridge  of  a  fortress.  In  our  island,  on 
^^'^-  the  contrary,  it  was  possible  to  live  long  and 

to  travel  far,  without  being  once  reminded,  by  any 
martial  sight  or  sound,  that  the  defence  of  nations 
had  become  a  science  and  a  calling.  The  majority 
of  Englishmen  who  were  under  twenty-five  years  of 
age  had    probably  never  seen  a   company  of  regular 

1  My  chief  authorities  for  this  financial  statement  will  be  found  in  the 
Commons'  Journals,  March  1.  and  March  20.  168|. 


Cli.  III.]  STATE    OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  310 

soldiers.  Of  the  cities  wliicli,  in  the  civil  war,  had 
valiantly  repelled  hostile  armies,  scarce  one  was  now 
capable  of  sustuininjjj  a  siege.  The  gates  stood  open 
night  and  day.  The  ditches  were  dry.  The  ram- 
parts had  been  suffered  to  fall  into  decay,  or  were  re- 
paired only  that  the  townsfolk  might  have  a  pleasant 
walk  on  summer  evenings.  Of  the  old  baronial  keeps 
many  had  been  shattered  by  the  cannon  of  Fairfax 
and  Cromwell,  and  lay  in  heaps  of  ruin,  overgrown 
with  ivy.  Those  which  remained  had  lost  their  mar- 
tial character,  and  were  now  rural  palaces  of  the  aris- 
tocracy. The  moats  were  turned  into  preserves  of  carp 
and  })ike.  The  mounds  were  planted  with  fragrant 
shrubs,  through  which  spiral  walks  ran  up  to  summer 
houses  adorned  with  mirrors  and  paintings.^  On  the 
ca])es  of  the  sea  coast,  and  on  many  inland  hills,  were 
still  seen  tall  posts,  surmounted  by  barrels.  Once  those 
barrels  had  been  filled  with  pitch.  Watchmen  had  been 
set  round  them  in  seasons  of  danger  ;  and,  within  a  few 
hours  after  a  Spanish  sail  had  been  discovered  in  the 
Cluuniel,  or  after  a  thousand  Scottish  mosstrooj)ers  had 
?rossed  the  Tweed,  the  signal  fires  were  blazing  fifty 
miles  off,  and  whole  counties  were  risinn;  in  arms.  But 
many  yaavs  had  now  elapsed  since  the  beacons  had  been 
lighted  ;  and  they  were  regarded  rather  as  curious 
relics  of  ancient  manners  than  as  parts  of  a  machinery 
necessary  to  the  safety  of  the  state.^ 

The  oidy  arn)y  which  the  law  recognised  was  the 
militia.  That  force  had  been  remodelled  by  two  Acts 
of  Parliament  passed  shortly  after  the  Restoration. 
Every  man  who  possessed  five  hundred  j)ounds  a  year 

1  See  for  exiiiniile  tlio  picdire  of  the  inouiid  at  Marlborough,  in  Stuke- 
ley's  Itinorariiim  Ciiriosum. 
*  Cliaiuberlayne's  Slate  of  England,  1084. 


320  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

derived  from  land,  or  six  thousand  pounds  of  personal 
estate,  was  bound  to  provide,  equip,  and  pay,  at  his 
own  charge,  one  horseman.  Every  man  who  had  fifty 
pounds  a  year  derived  from  land,  or  six  hundred  pounds 
of  ])ersonal  estate,  was  charged  in  like  manner  with  one 
pikeman  or  musketeer.  Smaller  proprietors  were  joined 
together  in  a  kind  of  society,  for  which  our  language 
does  not  afford  a  special  name,  but  which  an  Athenian 
would  have  called  a  Synteleia  ;  and  each  society  was 
required  to  furnish,  according  to  its  means,  a  horse  sol- 
dier or  a  foot  soldier.  The  whole  number  of  cavalry 
and  infantry  thus  maintained  was  popularly  estimated 
at  a  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  men.^ 

The  King  was,  by  the  ancient  constitution  of  the 
realm,  and  by  the  recent  and  solemn  acknowledgment 
of  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  the  sole  Captain  General 
of  this  large  force.  The  Lords  Lieutenants  and  their 
Deputies  held  the  command  under  him,  and  appointed 
meetings  for  dx'illing  and  inspection.  The  time  occu- 
pied by  such  meetings,  however,  was  not  to  exceed 
fourteen  days  in  one  year.  The  Justices  of  the  Peace 
were  authorised  to  inflict  slight  penalties  for  breaches 
of  discipline.  Of  the  ordinary  cost  no  part  was  paid 
by  the  crown  :  but,  wdien  the  trainbands  were  called 
out  against  an  enemy,  their  subsistence  became  a  charge 
on  the  general  revenue  of  the  state,  and  they  were  sub- 
ject to  the  utmost  rigour  of  martial  law. 

There  were  those  who  looked  on  the  militia  with  no 
friendly  eye.  Men  who  had  travelled  much  on  the 
Continent,  who  had  marvelled  at  the  stern  precision 
with  which  every  sentinel  moved  and  spoke  in  the 
citadels  built  by  Vauban,  who  had  seen  the   mighty 

1  13  &  14  Car.  II.  c.  3.;   15  Car.  II.  c.  4.     Chamberlayne's  State  of 
England,  1084. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  821 

armies  wliicli  poured  along  all  the  roads  of  Germany 
to  chase  tlie  Ottoman  from  the  gates  of  Vienna,  and 
who  had  been  dazzled  by  the  well  ordered  pomp  of 
the  household  troops  of  Lewis,  sneered  mucli  at  the 
way  in  whieli  the  peasants  of  Devonshire  and  York- 
shire marched  and  wheeled,  shouldered  muskets  and 
ported  pikes.  The  enemies  of  the  liberties  and  religion 
of  England  looked  with  aversion  on  a  force  which  could 
not,  without  extreme  risk,  be  employed  against  those 
liberties  and  that  religion,  and  missed  no  opportunity 
of  throwing  ridicule  on  the  rustic  soldiery.^  Enlight- 
ened patriots,  when  they  contrasted  these  rude  levies 
with  tlie  battalions  which,  in  time  of  war,  a  few  hours 
might  bring  to  the  coast  of  Kent  or  Sussex,  were  forced 
to  acknowledge  that,  dangerous  as  it  might  be  to  keep 
up  a  permanent  military  establishment,  it  might  be 
more  dangerous  still  to  stake  the  honour  and  indepen- 
dence of  the  country  on  the  result  of  a  contest  between 
ploughmen  officered  by  Justices  of  the  Peace,  and  vet- 
eran warriors  led  by  Marshals  of  France.  In  Parlia- 
ment, however,  it  was  necessary  to  express  such  o})in- 
ions  with  some  reserve  ;  for  the  militia  was  an  institu- 
tion eminently  popular.  Every  reflection  thrown  on  it 
excited  the  indignation  of  both  the  great  parties  in 
the  state,  and  especially  of  that  party  which  was  dis- 
tinguished by  peculiar  zeal  for  monarchy  and  for  the 

1  Drj-den,  in  his  Cyiiion  and  Iphifrcnia,  expressed,  with  his  usual  keen- 
ness and  encrpy,  tho.  sentiments  whicli  had  been  fashionable  among  the 
Bycojihants  of  James  tlie  Second:  — 

"The  coiinfrv  rings  nround  with  loud  alarms, 
And  raw  in  fields  the  rude  militia  swarms  ; 
Mouths  without  hanils,  mainfaiiird  at  vast  expense, 
In  peace  a  ehar^re,  iu  war  a  weak  defenre. 
Stout  ome  a  month  tliey  niarcli.  a  hlustering  band, 
And  ever,  hut  in  time  of  need,  at  hand. 
This  was  the  morn  when,  issuinjr  on  the  guard, 
Drawn  up  in  rauk  and  file,  they  stood  jirepared 
Of  seemiii);  arms  to  make  a  short  essay, 
Theu  hasten  to  be  drunk,  the  business  of  the  day  " 
▼OL.  I.  21 


822  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cn.  III. 

Anglican  Church.  Tlie  array  of"  the  counties  was 
commanded,  almost  exclusively  by  Tory  noblemen  and 
gentlemen.  They  were  proud  of  their  military  rank, 
and  considered  an  insult  offered  to  the  service  to  which 
they  belonged  as  offered  to  themselves.  They  were 
also  perfectly  aware  that  whatever  was  said  against  a 
militia  was  said  in  favour  of  a  standing  army  ;  and  the 
name  of  standing  army  was  hateful  to  them.  One 
such  army  had  held  dominion  in  England  ;  and  under 
that  dominion  the  King  had  been  murdered,  the  nobil- 
ity degraded,  the  landed  gentry  plundered,  the  Church 
persecuted.  There  was  scarcely  a  rural  grandee  wdio 
could  not  tell  a  story  of  wrongs  and  insults  suffered  by 
himself,  or  by  his  father,  at  the  hands  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary soldiers.  One  old  Cavalier  had  seen  half  his 
manor  house  blown  up.  The  hereditary  elms  of  an- 
other had  been  hewn  down.  A  third  could  never  20 
into  his  parish  church  without  being  reminded  by  the 
defaced  scutcheons  and  headless  statues  of  his  ancestry, 
that  Oliver's  redcoats  had  once  stabled  their  horses 
there.  The  consequence  was  that  those  very  Royal- 
ists, who  were  most  readv  to  fio-ht  for  the  Kino-  them- 
selves,  were  the  last  persons  whom  he  could  venture  to 
ask  for  the  means  of  hiring  regular  troops. 

Charles,  however,  had,  a  few  months  after  his  resto- 
ration, begun  to  form  a  small  standing  army.  He  felt 
that,  without  some  better  protection  than  that  of  the 
trainbands  and  beefeaters,  liis  palace  and  person  would 
hardly  be  secure,  in  the  vicinity  of  a  great  city  swarm- 
ing with  warlike  Fifth  Monarchy  men  who  had  just 
been  disbanded.  He  therefore,  careless  and  profuse  as 
he  was,  contrived  to  spare  from  his  pleasures  a  sum 
sufficient  to  keep  up  a  body  of  guards.  With  the  in- 
crease of  trade  and  of  public  wealth  his  revenues  in- 


Ch.  hi.)  state  op  England  in  1685.  323 

creased ;  and  he  was  thus  enabled,  in  spite  of  the  oc- 
casioiial  muvnmrs  of  the  Commons,  to  make  gradual 
additions  to  his  regular  forces.  One  considerable  ad- 
dition was  made  a  few  months  before  tlie  close  of  his 
reign.  The  costly,  useless,  and  pestilential  settlement 
of  Tangier  was  abandoned  to  the  barbarians  who  dwelt 
around  it ;  and  the  garrison,  consisting  of  one  regiment 
of  horse  and  two  regiments  of  foot,  was  brought  to 
England. 

The  little  army  thus  formed  by  Charles  the  Second 
was  the  germ  of  that  great  and  renowned  army  Avhich 
has,  in  the  present  century,  marched  triumphant  into 
Madrid  and  Paris,  into  Canton  and  Candahar.  The 
Life  Guards,  who  now  form  two  regiments,  were  then 
distributed  into  three  troops,  each  of  which  consisted 
of  two  hundred  carabineers,  exclusive  of  officers.  This 
corjjs,  to  which  the  safety  of  the  King  and  royal  fam- 
ily was  confided,  had  a  very  peculiar  character.  Even 
the  privates  were  designated  as  gentlemen  of  the  Guard. 
Many  of  them  were  of  good  families,  and  had  held  com- 
missions in  the  civil  war.  Their  pay  was  far  higher 
than  that  of  the  most  favoured  regiment  of  our  time, 
and  would  in  that  age  have  been  thought  a  respectable 
pi'ovision  for  the  younger  son  of  a  country  squire. 
Their  fine  horses,  their  rich  housings,  their  cuirasses, 
and  their  buff  coats  adorned  with  ribands,  velvet,  and 
golc.  lace,  made  a  s})lendid  appearance  in  St.  James's 
Park.  A  small  body  of  grenadier  dragoons,  who  came 
from  i  lower  class  and  received  lower  pay,  Avas  at- 
tached to  each  troop.  Another  body  of  household 
cavalry  distinguished  by  blue  coats  and  cloaks,  and 
still  called  the  Blues,  was  generally  quartered  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  capital.  Near  the  capital  lay 
also   the   corps   which   is   now   designated  as  the  first 


324  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAND.  Ch.  ITI.] 

regiment  of  dragoons,  but  wliich  was  then  the  only 
regiment  of  dragoons  on  the  Enghsh  estahhshment. 
It  had  recently  been  formed  out  of  the  cavahy  wlio 
had  returned  from  Tangier.  A  single  troop  of  dra- 
goons, which  did  not  form  part  of  any  regiment,  was 
stationed  near  Berwick,  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the 
peace  among  the  mosstroopers  of  the  border.  For  this 
species  of  service  the  dragoon  was  then  thought  to  be 
peculiarly  qualified.  He  has  since  become  a  mere 
horse  soldier.  But  in  the  seventeenth  century  he  was 
accurately  described  by  Montecuculi  as  a  foot  soldier 
who  used  a  horse  only  in  order  to  arrive  with  more 
speed  at  the  place  where  military  service  was  to  be 
performed. 

The  household  infantiy  consisted  of  two  regiments, 
which  were  then,  as  now,  called  the  first  regiment  of 
Foot  Guards,  and  the  Coldstream  Guards.  -  They  gen- 
erally  did  duty  near  Whitehall  and  St.  James's  Palace. 
As  there  were  then  no  barracks,  and  as,  by  the  Peti- 
tion of  Right,  it  had  been  declared  unlawful  to  quarter 
soldiers  on  private  families,  the  redcoats  filled  all  the 
alehouses  of  Westminster  and  the  Strand. 

There  were  five  other  regiments  of  foot.  One  of 
these,  called  the  Admiral's  Regiment,  was  especially 
destined  to  service  on  board  of  the  fleet.  The  remain- 
ino;  four  still  rank  as  the  first  four  regiments  of  the  line. 
Two  of  these  represented  two  brigades  Avhich  had  long 
sustained  on  the  Continent  the  fame  of  British  valour. 
The  first,  or  Royal  regiment,  had,  under  the  great 
Gustavus,  borne  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  deliverance 
of  Germany.  The  third  regiment,  distinguished  by 
flesh  coloured  facings,  from  which  it  derived  the  well 
known  name  of  the  Buffs,  had,  under  Maurice  of  Nas- 
sau, fought  not  less  bravely  for  the  deliverance  of  the 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  325 

Netherlands.  Both  these  gallant  bands  had  at  length, 
after  many  vicissitudes,  been  recalled  from  foreign  ser- 
vice by  Charles  the  Second,  and  had  been  placed  on 
the  Eno;lish  establishment. 

The  resriments  which  now  rank  as  the  second  and 
fourth  of  the  hne  had,  in  1685,  just  returned  from 
Tano-ier,  brinoino-  with  them  cruel  and  licentious  habits 
contracted  in  a  long  course  of  warfare  with  the  Moors. 
A  -few  companies  of  infantry  which  had  not  been  regi- 
mented lay  in  garrison  at  Tilbury  Fort,  at  Portsmouth, 
at  Plymouth,  and  at  some  other  important  stations  on 
or  near  the  coast. 

Since  the  beoinnino;  of  the  seventeenth   century  a 
great  change  had  taken  place  in  the  arms  of  the  in- 
fantry.    The  pike  had  been  gradually  giving  place  to 
the  musket ;  and,  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second,  most  of  his  foot  were  musketeers.     Still, 
however,  there  was  a  large  intermixture  of  pikemen. 
Each  class  of  troops  was  occasionally  instructed  in  the 
use  of  the  weapon  which   peciiliarly   belonged   to   the 
other  class.     Every  foot  soldier  had  at  his  side  a  sword 
for  close  fight.     The  musketeer  was  generally  provided 
with  a  weapon  which  had,  during  many  years,  been 
gradually  coming  into  use,  and  which  the  English  then 
cailetl  a  daf>'<''er,  but  which,  from  the  time  of  our  revo- 
lution,  has  been  known  among  us  by  the  French  name 
of  bayonet.     The  bayonet  seems  not  to  have  been  so 
I'ormidable  an  instrument  of  destruction  as  it  has  since 
become  ;  for  it  was  inserted  in  the  muzzle  of  the  gun  ; 
nnd  in   action  much  time  was  lost  while    the    soldier 
.infixed  his  bayonet  in  order  to  fire,  and  fixed  it  again 
in   order  to  charjie.     The  drao;oon,  when  dismounted, 
foiioht  as  a  musketeer. 

The  regular  army  which  was  kept  up  in  England  at 


326  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  III. 

the  beginning  of  tlie  year  1685  consisted,  all  ranks  in- 
cluded, of"  about  seven  thousand  foot,  and  about  seven- 
teen hundred  cavalry  and  dragoons.  The  whole  charge 
amounted  to  about  two  hundred  and  ninety  thousand 
pounds  a  year,  less  than  a  tenth  part  of  what  the  mili- 
tary establishment  of  France  then  cost  in  time  of  peace. 
The  daily  pay  of  a  private  in  the  Life  Guards  was  four 
shillings,  in  the  Blues  two  shillings  and  sixpence,  hi 
the  Dragoons  eighteenpence,  in  the  Foot  Guards  ten- 
pence,  and  in  the  line  eightpence.  The  discipline  was 
lax,  and  indeed  could  not  be  otherwise.  The  common 
law  of  England  knew  nothing  of  coiirts  martial,  and 
made  no  distinction,  in  time  of  peace,  between  a  soldier 
and  any  other  subject ;  nor  could  the  government  then 
venture  to  ask  even  the  most  loyal  Parliament  for  a 
Mutiny  Bill.  A  soldier,  therefore,  by  knocking  down 
his  colonel,  incurred  only  the  ordinary  penalties  of  as- 
sault and  battery,  and  by  refiising  to  obey  orders,  by 
sleeping  on  guard,  or  by  deserting  his  colours,  incurred 
no  legal  penalty  at  all.  Military  punishments  were 
doubtless  inflicted  during  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second  ;  but  they  were  inflicted  very  sparingly,  and 
in  such  a  manner  as  not  to  attract  public  notice,  or  to 
})roduce  an  appeal  to  the  courts  of  Westminster  Hall. 

Such  an  army  as  has  been  described  was  not  very 
likely  to  enslave  five  millions  of  Englishmen.  It  would 
indeed  have  been  unable  to  suppress  an  insuiTection 
in  London,  if  the  trainbands  of  the  City  had  joined 
the  insurgents.  Nor  could  the  King  expect  that,  if  a 
rising  took  place  in  England,  he  would  be  able  to  ob- 
tain help  from  his  other  dominions.  For,  though  both 
Scotland  and  Ireland  supported  separate  military  es- 
tablishments, those  establishments  were  not  more  than 
sufficient  to  keep  down  the  Puritan  malecontents  of 


Ch.  in.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  327 

tl  e  former  kingdom,  and  the  Popish  malecontents  of 
the  latter.  The  government  had,  however,  an  impor- 
ta)it  miHtary  resource  which  must  not  be  left  uimo- 
ticed.  There  were  in  the  ])ay  of  the  United  Prov- 
inces six  fine  regiments,  of  which  three  had  been  raised 
in  England  and  three  in  Scotland.  Their  native  prince 
had  reserved  to  himself  the  power  of  recalling  them, 
if  he  needed  their  help  against  a  foreign  or  domestic 
enemy.  In  the  meantime  tiiey  were  maintained  with- 
out any  charge  to  him,  and  were  kept  under  an  excel- 
lent discipline,  to  which  he  could  not  have  ventured  to 
subject  tiiem.^ 

If  the  jealousy  of  the  Parliament  and  of  the  nation 
made  it  impossible  for  the  King  to  maintain  a 
formidable  standing  army,  no  similar  impedi-  ®"*'y- 
ment  prevented  him  from  making  England  the  first  of 
maritime  powers.  Both  Whigs  and  Tories  were  ready 
to  applaud  every  step  tending  to  increase  the  efficiency 
of  that  force  which,  while  it  was  the  best  protection  of 
the  island  against  foreign  enemies,  was  powerless  against 
civil  liberty.  All  the  greatest  exploits  achieved  within 
the  memory  of  that  generation  by  English  soldiers  had 
been  acliieved  in  war  against  English  princes.  The 
victories  of  our  sailors  had  been  won  over  foreiffn  foes, 
and  had  averted  havoc  and  rapine  from  our  own  soil. 
By  at  least  half  the  nation  the  battle  of  Naseby  Avas  re- 
membered with  hoi-ror,  and  the  battle  of  Dunbar  with 
])):de    chequered    by  many    painful   feelings:  but  the 

1  51cm,  c'.  the  materials  wliicli  I  have  used  for  this  account  of  the  regular 
arinv  t.li  be  found  in  the  Historical  Records  of  Reffinients,  pulilished  by- 
command  of  King  William  the  Fourth,  and  under  the  direction  of  the  Ad- 
jutant General.  See  also  ("lianiltorlayne's  Slate  of  KnglaiKl,  lfi84;  Ahridg- 
fuent  of  the  English  Military  Discipline,  printed  by  especial  command, 
16S5;  Exercise  of  Foot,  by  tluMr  Majesties'  command,  1690. 


328  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cn.  III. 

defeat  of  the  Armada,  and  tlie  encounters  of  Blake  with 
the  Hollanders  and  Spaniards,  were  recollected  with 
unmixed  exultation  hy  all  parties.  Ever  since  the  Res- 
toration, the  Commons,  even  when  most  discontented 
and  most  parsimonious,  had  always  been  bountiful  even 
to  profusion  where  the  interest  of  the  navy  was  con- 
cerned. It  had  been  represented  to  them,  while  Danby 
was  minister,  that  many  of  the  vessels  in  the  royal  fleet 
were  old  and  unfit  for  sea  ;  and,  although  the  House 
was,  at  that  time,  in  no  giving  mood,  an  aid  of  near  six 
hundred  thousand  pounfls  had  been  granted  for  the 
building  of  thirty  new  men  of  war. 

But  the  liberality  of  the  nation  had  been  made  fruit- 
less by  the  vices  of  the  government.  The  list  of  the 
King's  ships,  it  is  true,  looked  well.  There  were  nine 
first  rates,  fourteen  second  rates,  thirty-nine  third  rates, 
and  many  smaller  vessels.  The  first  rates,  indeed,  were 
less  than  the  third  rates  of  our  time;  and  the  third 
rates  would  not  now  rank  as  verv  laro;e  frio;ates.  This 
force,  however,  if  it  had  been  efficient,  would  in  those 
days  have  been  regarded  by  the  greatest  potentate  as 
formidable.  But  it  existed  only  on  paper.  When  the 
reign  of  Charles  terminated,  his  navy  had  sunk  into 
degradation  and  decay,  such  as  would  be  almost  incred- 
ible if  it  were  not  certified  to  us  by  the  independent  and 
concurring  evidence  of  witnesses  whose  authority  is  be- 
yond exception.  Pepys,  the  ablest  man  in  the  English 
Admiralty,  drew  up,  in  the  year  1684,  a  memorial  on 
the  state  of  his  department,  for  the  information  of 
Charles.  A  few  months  later  Bonx'epaux,  the  ablest 
man  in  the  French  Admiralty,  havino-  visited  En  Hand 
for  the  especial  purpose  of  ascertaining  her  maritime 
strength,  laid  the  result  of  his  inquiries  before  Lewis. 
The  two  reports  are  to  the  same  effect.     Bonrepaux 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  329 

declared  that  he  found  everything  in  disorder  and  in 
miserable  condition,  that  the  superioi'ity  of  the  French 
marine  was  acknowledged  with  shame  and  envy  at 
Whitehall,  and  that  the  state  of  our  shipping  and  dock- 
yards Avas  of  itself  a  sufficient  guarantee  that  we  should 
not  meddle  in  the  disputes  of  Europe.^  P^pys  informed 
his  master  that  the  naval  administration  was  a  prodigy 
of  wastefuhiess,  corruption,  ig-norance,  and  indolence, 
that  no  estimate  could  be  trusted,  that  no  contract  was 
performed,  that  no  check  was  enforced.  The  vessels 
which  the  recent  liberality  of  Parliament  had  enabled 
the  government  to  build,  and  which  had  never  been  out 
of  harbour,  had  been  made  of  such  wretched  timber 
that  they  were  more  unfit  to  go  to  sea  than  the  old  hulls 
which  had  been  battered  thirty  years  before  by  Dutch 
and  Spanish  broadsides.  Some  of  the  new  men  of  war, 
indeed,  were  so  rotten  that,  unless  speedily  repaired, 
they  would  go  down  at  their  moorings.  The  sailors 
were  paid  with  so  little  punctuality  that  they  were  glad 
to  find  some  usurer  who  would  purchase  their  tickets 
at  forty  per  cent,  discount.  The  commanders  who  had 
not  powerful  friends  at  court  were  even  worse  treated. 
Some  officers,  to  whom  hii'ge  arrears  were  dvie,  after 
vainly  importuning  the  government  during  many  years, 
had  died  for  want  of  a  morsel  of  bi'eid. 

Most  of  the  ships  wliich  were  afloat  were  commanded 
by  men  who  had  not  been  bred  to  the  sea.  This,  it  is 
true,  was  not  an  abuse  introduced  by  the  government 

1  I  refer  to  a  despatdi  of  nonrepaux  to  Scifinelay,  datetl  Feb.  _."_.  ]68G. 
It  was  transcribed  for  Mr.  Fox  from  the  French  arcliivcs,  durint;  the  peace 
of  Amiens,  and,  wiiii  the  otiier  niateiials  broufjlit  together  by  tliat  great 
man,  was  iiitrii.-ted  to  nio  In-  the  kindness  of  the  late  I.adv  Ilolhuid,  and 
of  the  present  Lord  Holland.  1  (uight  to  add  that,  even  in  tlie  midst  of 
the  troubles  which  have  latily  agitated  Paris,  I  havi;  found  i.o  diHieulty  in 
obtaining,  fmni  the  liberaliiy  of  the  functionaries  there,  extracts  suiiplyiny 
some  chasms  in  Mr.  Fox's  collection.    (1848.) 


380  HISTCilY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Cn.  III. 

of  Charles.  No  state,  ancient  or  modern,  had,  before 
that  time,  made  a  complete  separation  between  the 
naval  and  military  services.  In  the  great  civilised 
nations  of  antiquity,  Cimon  and  Lysander,  Pompey 
and  Agrippa,  had  fought  battles  by  sea  as  well  as  b}' 
land.  Nor  had  the  impulse  which  nautical  science 
received  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  produced 
any  new  division  of  labour.  At  Flodden  the  right 
wing  of  the  victorious  army  was  led  by  the  Admiral 
of  Eno'land.  At  Jarnac  and  Moncontour  the  Huoue- 
not  ranks  were  marshalled  by  the  Admiral  of  France. 
Neither  John  of  Austria,  the  conqueror  of  Lepanto, 
nor  Lord  Howard  of  Effingham,  to  whose  direction 
the  marine  of  England  was  confided  when  the  Span- 
ish invaders  were  approaching  our  shores,  had  re- 
ceived the  education  of  a  sailor.  Raleigh,  highly  cel- 
ebrated as   a   naval    commander,    had    served    durino- 

'  CI? 

many  years  as  a  soldier  in  France,  the  Netherlands, 
a)id  Ireland.  Blake  had  distinguished  himself  by  his 
skilful  and  valiant  defence  of  an  inland  town  before  he 
humbled  the  pride  of  Holland  and  of  Castile  on  the 
ocean.  Since  the  Restoration  the  same  system  had  been 
followed.  Great  fleets  had  been  entrusted  to  the  di- 
rection of  Rupert  and  Monk ;  Rupert,  who  was  re- 
nowned chiefly  as  a  hot  and  daring  cavalry  officer,  and 
Monk,  who,  when  he  wished  his  ship  to  change  her 
course,  moved  the  mirth  of  his  crew  by  calling  out, 
"  Wheel  to  the  left !  " 

But  aboiat  this  time  wise  men  began  to  perceive  that 
the  rapid  improvement,  both  of  the  art  of  Avar  and  of 
the  art  of  navigation,  made  it  necessary  to  draw  a  line 
between  two  professions  which  had  hitherto  been  con- 
founded. Either  the  command  of  a  regiment  or  the 
command  of  a  ship  was  now  a  matter  quite  sufficient  to 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   Of   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  331 

occupy  the  attention  of  a  single  mind.  In  the  year 
1672  the  French  government  determined  to  educate 
young  men  of  good  family  from  a  very  early  age  spe- 
cially for  the  sea  service.  But  the  English  govern- 
ment, instead  of  following  this  excellent  example,  not 
only  continued  to  distribute  high  naval  commands 
among  landsmen,  but  selected  for  such  commands  lands- 
m3n  who,  even  on  land,  could  not  safely  have  been  put 
in  any  imj^ortant  trust.  Any  lad  of  noble  birth,  any 
dissolute  courtier  for  whom  one  of  the  King's  mistresses 
would  speak  a  word,  might  hope  that  a  ship  of  the  line, 
and  with  it  the  honour  of  the  country  and  the  lives  of 
hundreds  of  brave  men,  would  be  committed  to  his 
care.  It  mattered  not  that  he  had  never  in  his  life 
taken  a  voyage  except  on  the  Thames,  that  he  could 
not  keep  his  feet  in  a  breeze,  tliat  he  did  not  know  the 
difference  between  latitude  and  longitude.  No  previous 
training  was  thought  necessaiy  ;  or,  at  most,  he  was 
sent  to  make  a  short  trip  in  a  man  of  war,  where  he 
was  subjected  to  no  discipline,  where  he  was  treated 
with  marked  respect,  and  where  he  lived  in  a  round  of 
revels  and  amusements.  If,  in  the  intervals  of  feastin<>-, 
drinking  and  gambling,  he  succeeded  in  learning  the 
meaning  of  a  few  technical  phrases  and  the  names  of  the 
points  of  the  compass,  he  was  thought  fullv  qualiHed  to 
take  charge  of  a  threedecker.  This  is  no  imaginary  de- 
scription. In  1666,  Joim  Sheffield,  Earl  of  Mulgrave, 
at  seventeen  years  of  age,  volunteered  to  serve  at  sea 
against  the  Dutch.  He  passed  six  weeks  on  board,  di- 
verting himself,  as  well  as  he  could,  in  the  society  of 
some  young  libertines  of  rank,  and  then  returned  home 
to  take  the  command  of  a  troop  of  horse.  After  tliis 
he  was  never  on  the  water  till  the  year  1672,  when  he 
again  joined  the  fleet,  and  was  almost  immediately  ap- 


332  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

pointed  Captain  of  a  ship  of  eighty-four  guns,  reputed 
the  finest  in  the  navy.  He  was  then  twenty-three 
years  old,  and  had  not,  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life, 
been  three  months  afloat.  As  soon  as  he  came  back 
from  sea  he  was  made  Colonel  of  a  regiment  of  foot. 
This  is  a  specimen  of  the  manner  in  which  naval  com- 
mands of  the  highest  importance  were  then  given  ;  and 
a  favourable  specimen  ;  for  Mulgrave,  though  he  wanted 
experience,  wanted  neither  parts  nor  courage.  Others 
were  promoted  in  the  same  way  who  not  only  were  not 
good  officers,  but  who  were  intellectually  and  morally 
incapable  of  ever  becoming  good  officei's,  and  whose 
only  recommendation  was  that  they  had  been  ruined  by 
folly  and  vice.  The  chief  bait  which  allured  these  men 
into  the  ser\ace  was  the  profit  of  conveying  bullion  and 
other  valuable  commodities  from  port  to  port ;  for  both 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Mediterranean  were  then  so  much 
infested  by  pirates  from  Barbary  that  merchants  were 
not  willing  to  trust  precious  cargoes  to  any  custody  but 
that  of  a  man  of  war.  A  Captain  might  thus  clear 
several  thousands  of  pounds  by  a  short  voyage  ;  and 
for  this  lucrative  business  he  too  often  neolected  the 
interests  of  his  country  and  the  honour  of  his  flag,  made 
mean  submissions  to  foreign  powers,  disobeyed  the  most 
direct  injunctions  of  his  superiors,  lay  in  port  when  he 
was  ordered  to  chase  a  Sallee  rover,  or  ran  A\ith  cUA- 
lars  to  Leghorn  when  his  instructions  directed  him  to 
repair  to  Lisbon.  And  all  this  he  did  with  im})unity. 
The  same  interest  which  had  placed  him  in  a  post  for 
which  he  was  unfit  maintained  him  there.  No  Ad- 
miral, bearded  by  these  corrupt  and  dissolute  millions 
Ltf  the  palace,  dared  to  do  more  than  mutter  something 
about  a  court  martial.  If  any  officer  showed  a  higher 
sense  of  duty  than  his  fellows,  he  soon  found  that  he 


Ch.  m.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  333 

lost  money  without  acquiring  honour.  One  Captain, 
who,  by  strictly  obeying  the  orders  of  the  Admiralty, 
missed  a  caro-o  which  would  have  been  worth  four  thou- 
sand  pounds  to  him,  was  told  by  Charles,  with  ignoble 
levity,  that  he  was  a  great  fool  for  his  pains. 

The  discipline  of  the  navy  was  of  a  piece  throughout. 
As  the  courtly  Captain  despised  the  Admiralty,  he  was 
in  turn  despised  by  his  crew.  It  could  not  be  concealed 
that  he  was  inferior  in  seamanship  to  every  foremast 
man  on  board.  It  was  idle  to  expect  that  old  sailors, 
familiar  with  the  hurricanes  of  the  tropics  and  with  the 
icebergs  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  would  pay  prompt  and 
respectful  obedience  to  a  chief  who  knew  no  more  of 
winds  and  waves  than  could  be  learned  in  a  gilded 
barge  between  Whitehall  Stairs  and  Hampton  Court. 
To  trust  such  a  novice  with  the  working  of  a  shi|)  was 
evidently  impossible.  The  direction  of  the  navigation 
was  therefore  taken  from  the  Captain  and  given  to  the 
Master:  but  this  partition  of  authority  produced  in- 
numerable inconveniences.  The  line  of  demarcation 
was  not,  and  perhaps  could  not  be,  drawn  Avith  precision. 
There  was  therefore  constant  wrangling.  The  Captain, 
confident  in  proportioi\  to  his  ignorance,  treated  the 
Master  with  lordly  contempt.  The  Master,  well  aware 
of  the  danger  of  disobliging  the  powerful,  too  often, 
after  a  struggle,  yielded  against  his  better  judgment ; 
and  it  was  well  if  the  loss  of  ship  and  crew  was  not  the 
consequence.  In  general  the  least  mischievous  of  the 
aristocratical  Cajitains  were  those  who  completely  aban- 
doned to  others  tlie  direction  of  the  vessels,  and  thought 
only  of  making  money  and  spending  it.  The  way  in 
which  these  men  lived  was  so  ostentatious  and  voluj>- 
tuous  that,  greedy  as  they  were  of  gain,  they  seldom 
became  rich.    They  dressed  as  if  for  a  gala  at  Versailles, 


334  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND-  [Ch.  HI; 

ate  off  plate,  drank  the  richest  wines,  and  kept  hararaa 
on  board,  while  hunger  and  scurvy  raged  among  the 
crews,  and  while  corpses  were  daily  flung  out  of  the 
portholes. 

Such  was  tlie  ordinary  character  of  those  who  were 
then  called  gentlemen  Captains.  Mingled  with  them 
were  to  be  found,  happily  for  our  country,  naval  com- 
manders of  a  very  different  description,  men  whose 
whole  life  had  been  passed  on  the  deep,  and  who  had 
worked  and  fought  their  way  from  the  lowest  offices  of 
the  forecastle  to  rank  and  distinction.  One  of  the  most 
eminent  of  these  officers  was  Sir  Christopher  Mings, 
who  entered  the  service  as  a  cabin  boy,  who  fell  fighting 
bravely  against  the  Dutch,  and  whom  his  crew,  weep- 
ing and  vowino;  vengeance,  carried  to  the  o;rave.  From 
him  sprang,  by  a  singular  kind  of  descent,  a  line  of 
valiant  and  expert  sailors.  His  cabin  boy  was  Sir  John 
Narborough  ;  and  the  cabin  boy  of  Sir  John  Narborough 
was  Sir  Cloudesley  Shovel.  To  the  strong  natural  sense 
and  dauntless  courage  of  this  class  of  men  England  owes 
a  debt  never  to  be  forgotten.  It  was  by  such  resolute 
hearts  that,  in  spite  of  much  maladministration,  and  in 
s])ite  of  the  blunders  and  treasons  of  more  courtly  ad- 
mirals, our  coasts  were  protected  and  the  reputation  of 
our  flag  upheld  during  many  gloomy  and  perilous  years. 
But  to  a  landsman  these  tarpaulins,  as  they  were  called, 
seemed  a  strange  and  half  savage  race.  All  their  knowl- 
edge was  professional  ;  and  their  professional  knowl- 
edge was  practical  I'ather  than  scientific.  Off  their 
own  element  they  were  as  simple  as  children.  Their 
deportment  was  uncouth.  There  was  roughness  in 
their  very  good  nature  ;  and  their  talk,  where  it.was  not 
made  up  of  nautical  phrases,  was  too  commonly  made 
up  of  oaths  and  curses.     Suclrwere  the  chiefs  in  whose 


Ch.  Ill]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN    1G85.  335 

rude  school  were  formed  those  sturdy  warriors  from 
whom  Smollet,  in  the  next  age,  drew  Lieutenant  Bowl- 
ing and  Commodore  Trunnion.  But  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  there  was  in  tlie  service  of  any  of  the  Stuarts 
a  single  naval  officer  such  as,  according  to  the  notions 
of  our  times,  a  naval  officer  ought  to  be,  that  is  to  say, 
a  man  versed  in  tlie  theory  and  pi'actice  of  his  calling, 
and  steeled  a<i;ainst  all  the  danoers  of  battle  and  tern- 
pest,  yet  of  cultivated  niiud  and  polished  manners. 
There  were  gentlemen  and  there  were  seamen  in  the 
navy  of  Charles  the  Second.  But  the  seamen  were 
not  gentlemen  ;  and  the  gentlemen  were  not  seamen. 

The  English  navy  at  that  time  might,  according  to 
the  most  exact  estimates  which  have  come  down  to  us, 
have  been  kept  in  an  efficient  state  for  three  hundred 
and  eighty  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Four  lumdred 
thousand  pounds  a  year  was  the  sum  actually  expended, 
but  expended,  as  we  have  seen,  to  very  little  purpose. 
The  cost  of  the  French  marine  was  nearly  the  same  ; 
the  cost  of  the  Dutch  marine  considerably  more.' 

The  cliaro;e  of  the  Eno;lish  ordnance  in  the  seven- 
teenth  century  was,  as  compared  with  other  .,,,j,. 
military  and  naval  charges,  much  smaller  than   "'■'""<«• 
at  ])rescnt.    At  most  of  the  garrisons  there  were  gunnel's, 
and  here  and  there,  at  an  important  post,  an  engineer  was 


1  My  ■.nfnrniatioii  ri-spei-tiiif;  the  cniKlition  of  the  navy,  at  tliis  time,  is 
chicfi"  derived  iVom  l'e|))s.  Ills  rep<ir(,  presented  to  Charles  the  Second 
in  May  1084,  has  never,  I  believe,  been  i)nnted.  The  manuscript  is  at 
]\Iaf;dalene  Colh>f;c,  Canibridfje.  At  Magdalene  Colicf^c  is  also  a  valuable 
manuscript  contaiiiinj;  a  lietailed  account  of  the  maritime  establisliments 
of  the  country  in  Decemlier  1G84.  I'cpys's  "  .Meumirs  rclatiiifj  to  the  State 
of  tlie  Koyal  Navy  for  Ten  Years,  determined  l>ecemher  1688,"  and  his 
diary  and  correspondence  during  his  mission  to  Tangier,  are  in  print.  I 
have  made  large  nse  of  them.  Sec  also  Sheffield's  Memoirs,  Te(  nge'ft 
Diary,  Aulirey's  Life  of  Monk,  the  Life  of  Sir  Cloudusley  Shovel,  1704: 
Commons"  .lournals,   March  1.  and  .March  20.  168|. 


3BG  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

to  be  found.  But  there  was  no  regiment  of  artillery, 
no  brigade  of  sappers  and  miners,  no  college  in  whicli 
vouno;  soldiers  could  learn  the  scientific  part  of  the  art 
of  war.  The  difiiculty  of  moving  field  pieces  was  ex- 
treme. When,  a  few  years  later,  William  marched 
from  Devonshire  to  London,  the  apparatus  which  he 
brought  with  him,  though  such  as  had  long  been  in 
constant  use  on  the  Continent,  and  such  as  would  now 
be  i-egarded  at  Woolwich  as  rude  and  cumbrous,  ex- 
cited in  our  ancestors  an  admiration  resembling  that 
which  the  Indians  of  America  felt  for  the  Castilian 
harquebusses.  The  stock  of  gunpowder  kept  in  the 
English  forts  and  arsenals  was  boastfully  mentioned  by 
patriotic  writers  as  something  which  might  well  impress 
neiirhbouring  nations  with  awe.  It  amounted  to  four- 
teen  or  fifteen  thousand  barrels,  about  a  twelfth  of  the 
quantity  which  it  is  now  thought  necessary  to  have 
always  in  store.  The  expenditure  under  the  head  of 
ordnance  was  on  an  average  a  little  above  sixty  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year.^ 

The  whole  effective  charge  of  the  army,  navy,  and 
oi'dnance,  was  about  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
Noneffective  pouuds.  The  noueffectiA'^e  charge,  which  is 
charge.  j^q^^  j^  hcavy  part  of  our  public  burdens,  can 

hardly  be  said  to  have  existed.  A  very  small  number 
of  naval  officers,  who  were  not  employed  in  the  pub- 
lic service,  drew  half  pay.  No  Lieutenant  was  on  the 
list,  nor  any  Captain  who  had  not  commanded  a  ship 
of  the  first  or  second  rate.  As  the  country  then  pos- 
sessed only  seventeen  ships  of  the  first  and  second  rate 
that  had  ever  been  at  sea,  and  as  a  large  proportion 

1  Chamberlayne's  State  of  Eii.i;land,  1G84;  Commons'  Journals,  March 
1.  and  March  20.  168|.  In  1833,  it  was  determined,  after  full  enquiry, 
that  a  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  barrels  of  gunpowder  should  con- 
stantly be  kept  in  store. 


C«.  III.]  STA'xE    OF   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  337 

of  the  persons  who  had  commanded  such  ships  had 
good  posts  on  shore,  the  expenditure  under  this  head 
must  have  heen  small  indeed.^  In  the  army,  half  pay 
was  given  merely  as  a  special  and  temporary  allowance 
to  a  small  number  of  officers  belonojino;  to  two  rem- 
iTients,  Avhich  were  peculiarly  situated. ^  "  Greenwich 
Hospital  had  not  been  founded.  Chelsea  Hospital  was 
building :  but  tire  cost  of  that  institution  was  defrayed 
partly  by  a  deduction  from  the  pay  of  the  troops,  and 
partly  by  private  subscription.  The  King  promised  to 
contribute  only  twenty  thousand  pounds  for  architec- 
tural expenses,  and  five  thousand  a  year  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  invalids.^  It  was  no  part  of  the  plan 
that  there  should  be  outpensioners.  The  Avhole  non- 
effective charge,  military  and  naval,  can  scarcely  have 
exceeded  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year.  It  now  exceeds 
ten  thousand  pounds  a  day. 

Of  the  expense  of  civil  government  only  a  small  por- 
tion was  defrayed  bv  the  crown.  The  great  charge  of 
majority  ot  ttie  tunctionanes  wliose  busmess  n:cnt. 
was  to  administer  justice  and  preserve  order  either  gave 
their  services  to  the  public  gratuitously,  or  were  remu- 
nerated in  a  manner  which  caused  no  drain  on  the 
revenue  of  the  state.  The  sheriffs,  mayors,  and  alder- 
men of  the  towns,  the  country  gentlemen  who  were  in 
the  comnn'ssion  of  the  peace,  the  headboroughs,  bailiffs, 
and  petty  constables,  cost  the  king  nothing.  The  supe- 
rior courts  of  law  were  chieflv  supported  by  fees. 

Our  relations  with  foreign  courts  had  been  put  on 


1  It  appears  from  ttie  rcrords  of  the  Admiralty,  that  Flag  oflficers  were 
allowed  hiilfpay  in  1668,  Captnins  of  first  and  second  rate?  not  till  1674. 

'^  Warrant  in  the  War  Ofliee  Records,  dated  March  26.  1678. 

8  Kvelyn'.s  Dinry,  Jan.  27.  lf;82.  I  have  seen  a  privy  seal,  dated  May 
17.  1G8.3.  which  confirms  ICveJj-n's  testimony. 

VOL.  I.  22 


838  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

the  most  economical  footing.  The  only  diplomatic  agent 
who  had  the  title  of  Ambassador  resided  at  Constanti- 
nople, and  was  partly  supported  by  the  Turkey  Com- 
pany. Even  at  the  court  of  Versailles  England  had 
only  an  Envoy  ;  and  she  had  not  even  an  Envoy  at  the 
Spanish,  Swedish,  and  Danish  courts.  The  whole  ex- 
pense under  this  head  cannot,  in  the  last  year  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  have  much  exceeded 
twenty  thousand  pounds.^ 

In  this  frugality  there  was  nothmg  laudable.  Charles 
Great  gains  "^^^'  ^^  usual,  niggardly  in  the  wrong  place, 
and  court-"  ^"^  munificent  in  the  wrong  place.  The  pub- 
""•  lie  service  was  starved  that  courtiers  mioht 

be  pampered.  The  expense  of  the  navy,  of  the  ord- 
nance, of  pensions  to  needy  old  officers,  of  missions  to 
foreign  courts,  must  seem  small  indeed  to  the  present 
generation.  But  the  personal  favourites  of  the  sover- 
eign, his  ministers,  and  the  creatvires  of  those  minis- 
ters, were  goi'ged  with  public  money.  Their  salaries 
and  pensions,  when  compared  with  the  incomes  of  the 
nobility,  the  gentry,  the  commercial  and  professional 
men  of  that  age,  will  appear  enormous.  The  greatest 
estates  in  the  kingdom  then  very  little  exceeded  twenty 
thousand  a  year.  The  Duke  of  Ormond  had  twenty- 
two  thousand  a  year.^  The  Duke  of  Buckingham,  be- 
fore his  extravagance  had  impaired  his  great  property, 
had  nineteen  thousand  six  hundred  a  year.^  George 
Monk,  Duke  of  Albemarle,  who  had  been  rewarded  for 
his  eminent  services  with  immense  grants  of  crown  land, 

1  James  the  Second  sent  Envoys  to  Spain,  Sweden,  and  Denmark;  yet 
in  his  reign  the  diplomatic  expenditure  was  little  more  than  30,000^.  a 
year  See  the  Commons'  Journals,  March  20.  168|.  Chamberlayne'e 
St&V.  of  Enpcland,  1084,  1686. 

2  Carte's  Lite  of  Ormond. 

«  Pepys's  Diary,  Feb.  U.  lfi(i|. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    168").  339 

and  wlio  liad  been  notorious  both  for  covetousness  and 
for  parsimony,  left  fifteen  thousand  a  year  of  real  estate, 
and  sixty  thousand  pounds  in  money  which  probably 
yielded  seven  per  cent.^  These  three  Dukes  were  sup- 
posed to  be  three  of  the  very  richest  subjects  in  Eng- 
land. The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  can  hardly  have 
had  five  thousand  a  year.^  The  average  income  of  a 
temporal  peer  was  estimated,  by  the  best  informed  per- 
sons, at  about  three  thousand  a  year,  the  average  in- 
come of  a  bai'onet  at  nine  hundred  a  year,  the  average 
income  of  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  less 
than  eioht  hundred  a  vear.^  A  thousand  a. year  was 
thoujiht  a  laro;e  revenue  for  a  barrister.  Two  thousand 
a  year  was  hardly  to  be  made  in  the  Court  of  King's 
Bench,  except  by  the  crown  lawyers.^  It  is  evident, 
therefore,  that  an  official  man  would  have  been  well 
paid  if  he  had  received  a  fourth  or  fifth  part  of  what 
would  now  be  an  adequate  stipend.  In  fact,  however, 
the  stipends  of  the  higher  class  of  official  men  were  as 
large  as  at  present,  and  not  seldom  larger.  The  Lord 
Treasurer,  for  example,  had  eight  thousand  a  year,  and, 
when  the  Treasury  was  in  commission,  the  junior  Lords 
had  sixteen  hundred  a  year  each.  The  Paymaster  of 
the  Forces  had  a  poundage,  amounting  in  time  of  peace 
to  about  five  thousand  a  year,  on  all  the  money  which 

1  Sec  the  IJeport  of  tlic  Bath  and  Montague  case,  which  was  decided  by 
Lord  Keeper  Somers,  in  December,  1693. 

2  Duririfi  three  quarters  of  a  year,  bcginninpf  from  Christmas  1680,  the 
revenues  of  the  see  of  Canterbury  were  received  bv  an  officer  appointed  by 
the  crown.  That  officer's  accounts  are  now  in  the  liritish  Museum.  (Lans- 
downe  MSS.  885.)  Tiie  gross  revenue  for  the  three  quarters  was  not  quite 
four  thousand  pounds;  and  the  difference  between  tlie  gross  and  the  net 
revenue  was  evidently  sometiiiug  considerable. 

*  King's  Natural  and  I'dlitical  Conclusions.  Davenanton  the  Balance  of 
Trade.  Sir  W.  Temple  says,  "  The  revenues  of  a  House  of  Commons  liave 
wtdom  exceeded  four  hundred  thousand  pounds."     Memoirs,  Third  Part. 

*  Langton's  Conversations  with  Chief  Justice  Hale,  1672. 


340  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Cm.  HI. 

passed  through  his  hands.  The  Groom  of  the  Stole 
liad  five  thousand  a  year,  the  Commissioners  of  the  Cus- 
toms twelve  hundred  a  year  each,  the  Lords  of  the  Bed- 
chamber a  thousand  a  year  each.^  The  regular  salary, 
however,  was  the  smallest  part  of  the  gains  of  an  offi- 
cial man  of  that  age.  From  the  noblemen  who  held 
the  white  staff  and  the  great  seal,  down  to  the  hvun- 
blest  tidewaiter  and  ganger,  what  would  now  be  called 
gross  corru})tion  was  practised  without  disguise  and 
without  reproach.  Titles,  places,  connnissions,  pardons, 
weve  daily  sold  in  market  overt  by  the  great  dignitaries 
of  the  ryaim  ;  and  every  clerk  in  every  department 
imitated,  to  the  best  of  his  power,  the  evil  example. 

During  the  last  century  no  prime  minister,  however 
powerful,  has  become  rich  in  office  ;  and  several  prime 
ministers  have  impaired  their  private  fortune  in  sustain- 
ing their  public  character.  In  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, a  statesman  who  was  at  the  head  of  affairs  might 
easily,  and  without  giving  scandal,  accumulate  in  no 
long  time  an  estate  amply  sufficient  to  support  a  duke- 
dom. It  is  probable  that  the  income  of  the  prime  min- 
ister, during  his  tenure  of  power,  far  exceeded  that  of 
any  other  subject.  The  place  of  Lord  Lieutenant  of 
Ireland  Avas  popularly  reported  to  be  worth  forty  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year.^  The  gains  of  the  Chancellor  Clar- 
endon, of  Arlington,  of  Lauderdale,  and  of  Danby,  were 
certainly  enormous.  The  sumptuous  palace  to  which  the 
populace  of  London  gave  the  name  of  Dunkirk  Rouse, 
the  stately  pavilions,  the  fishponds,  the  deer  park  and 
the  orangery  of  Euston,  the  more  than  Italian  luxury 
of  Ham,  with  its  busts,  fountains,  and   aviaries,  were 

1  Commons'  Journals,  April  27.  1689;  Chamberlayne's  State  of  England 
1684. 

2  See  the  Travels  of  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  341 

among  the  many  signs  which  indicated  what  was  the 
shortest  road  to  boundless  wealth.  This  is  the  true 
explanation  of  the  unscrupulous  violence  with  which 
the  statesmen  of  that  day  struggled  for  office,  of  the 
tenacity  with  which,  in  spite  of  vexations,  humiliations 
and  dangers,  they  clung  to  it,  and  of  the  scandalous 
compliances  to  which  they  stooped  in  order  to  retain  it. 
Even  in  our  own  age,  formidable  as  is  the  power  of 
opinion,  and  high  as  is  the  standard  of  integrity,  there 
would  be  crreat  risk  of  a  lamentable  chance  in  the 
character  of  our  public  men,  if  the  place  of  First  Lord 
of  the  Treasuiy  or  Secretary  of  State  were  worth  a 
hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Happily  for  our 
comitry  the  emoluments  of  the  highest  class  of  func- 
tionaries have  not  only  not  grown  in  proportion  to  the 
general  growth  of  our  opulence,  but  have  positively 
diminished. 

The  fact  that  the  sum  raised  in  England  by  taxation 
has,  in  a  time  not  exceeding  two  long  lives,  g^^^g  ^f 
been  multiplied  fortyfold,  is  strange,  and  »e"<^"''">*- 
may  at  first  sight  seem  appalling.  But  those  who  are 
alarmed  by  the  inci*ease  of  the  public  burdens  may 
perhaps  be  reassured  when  they  have  considered  the 
increase  of  the  public  resources.  In  the  year  1685, 
the  value  of  the  produce  of  the  soil  far  exceeded  the 
value  of  all  the  other  fruits  of  human  industry.  Yet 
agriculture  was  in  what  would  now  be  considered  as  a 
very  rude  and  imperfect  state.  The  arable  land  and 
pasture  land  were  not  supposed  by  the  best  ])olitical 
arithmeticians  of  that  age  to  amount  to  much  more 
than  half  the  area  of  the  kinmlom.^  The  remainder 
was  believed  to  consist  of  moor,  forest,  and  fen.    These 

^  Kinp^'8  Natural  and  Political  Conclusions.     Davenant  on  the  Balance 
tf  Trade. 


342  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  IIL 

computations  are  strongly  confirmed  by  the  road  books 
and  maps  of  the  seventeenth  century.  From  those 
books  and  maps  it  is  clear  that  many  routes  which  now 
pass  through  an  endless  succession  of  orchards,  hay- 
fields,  and  beanfields,  then  i-an  through  nothing  but 
heath,  swamp,  and  warren.^  In  the  drawings  of  English 
landscapes  made  in  that  age  for  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo, 
scarce  a  hedge-row  is  to  be  seen,  and  numerous  tracts, 
now  rich  with  cultivation,  appear  as  bare  as  Salisbury 
Plain. ^  At  Enfield,  hardly  out  of  sight  of  the  smoke 
of  the  capital,  was  a  region  of  five  and  twenty  miles  in 
circumference,  which  contained  only  three  houses  and 
scarcely  any  inclosed  fields.  Deer,  as  free  as  in  an 
American  forest,  wandered  there  by  thousands.^  It  is 
to  be  remarked,  that  wild  animals  of  large  size  were 
then  far  more  numerous  than  at  present.  The  last  wild 
boars,  indeed,  which  had  been  preserved  for  the  royal 
diversion,  and  had  been  allowed  to  ravage  the  cultivated 
land  with  their  tusks,  had  been  slaughtered  by  the  ex- 
asperated rustics  during  the  license  of  the  civil  war. 
The  last  wolf  that  has  roamed  our  island  had  been 
slain  in  Scotland  a  short  time  before  the  close  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  tlie  Second.  But  many  breeds,  now 
extinct  or  rare,  both  of  quadrupeds  and  birds,  were  still 
common.    The  fox,  whose  life  is  now,  in  many  counties, 

1  See  the  Itinerarium  Angliaj,  1675,  b}'  John  Ogilby,  Cosmographer 
Royal.  He  describes  great  part  of  the  hind  as  wood,  fen,  heath  on  both 
sides,  marsh  on  both  sides.  In  some  of  his  maps  the  roads  througli  in- 
closed country  are  marked  by  lines,  and  the  roads  through  unenclosed  coun- 
try by  dots.  The  proportion  of  imenclosed  country,  which,  if  cultiTated, 
must  have  been  wretchedly  cultivated,  seems  to  have  been  very  great. 
From  Abingdon  to  Gloucester,  for  example,  a  distance  of  forty  or  fiftj'  miles, 
there  was  not  a  single  enclosure,  and  scarcely  one  enclosure  between  Big- 
gleswade and  Lincoln. 

2  Large  copies  of  these  highly  interesting  drawings  are  in  the  noble  col- 
lection bequeathed  by  Mr.  Grenville  to  the  British  Museum. 

8  Evelyn's  Diary,  June  2.  1675. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  343 

held  almost  as  sacred  as  that  of  a  human  being,  was 
considered  as  a  mere  nuisance.  Oliver  Saint  John  told 
the  Long  Parliament  that  Strafford  was  to  be  regarded, 
not  as  a  stag  or  a  hare,  to  whom  some  law  was  to  be 
given,  but  as  a  fox,  who  was  to  be  snared  by  any  means, 
and  knocked  on  the  head  without  pity.  This  illustra- 
tion would  be  by  no  means  a  happy  one,  if  addressed 
to  country  gentlemen  of  our  time:  but  in  Saint  John's 
days  there  were  not  seldom  great  massacres  of  foxes 
to  which  the  peasantry  thronged  with  all  the  dogs  that 
could  be  mustered :  traps  were  set ;  nets  were  sjH'ead ; 
no  quarter  was  given  ;  and  to  shoot  a  female  with  cub 
was  considered  as  a  feat  which  merited  the  warmest 
gratitude  of  the  neighbourhood.  The  red  deer  were 
then  as  common  in  Gloucestershire  and  Hampshire  as 
they  now  are  among  the  Grampian  Hills.  On  one  occa- 
sion Queen  Anne,  on  her  way  to  Portsmouth,  saw  a 
herd  of  no  less  than  five  hundred.  The  wild  bull  with 
his  white  mane  was  still  to  be  found  wanderino;  iu  a  few 
of  the  southern  forests.  The  badger  made  his  dark 
and  tortuous  hole  on  the  side  of  every  hill  where  the 
copsewood  grew  thick.  The  wild  cats  were  frequently 
hoard  by  night  wailino-  round  the  lodijes  of  the  rano-ers 
of  Whittlebury  and  Needwood.  The  yellow-breasted 
martin  was  still  pursued  in  Cranbourne  Chase  for  his 
fur,  reputed  inferior  only  to  that  of  the  sable.  Fen 
eagles,  measuring  more  than  nine  feet  between  the  ex- 
tremities of  the  wings,  preyed  on  fish  along  the  coast 
of  Norfolk.  On  all  the  downs,  from  the  British  Chan- 
nel to  Yorkshire,  huge  bustards  strayed  in  troops  of 
fifty  or  sixty,  and  were  often  hunted  with  greyhounds. 
The  marshes  of  Cambridgeshire  and  Lincolnshire  were 
covered  during  some  months  of  everv  year  by  immense 
clouds  of  cranes.     Some  of  these  races  the  progress  of 


344  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

cultivation  lias  extirpiited.  Of  others  the  numbers  are 
so  much  diminished  that  men  crowd  to  gaze  at  a  speci- 
men as  at  a  Bengal  tiger,  or  a  Polar  bear.^ 

The  progi'ess  of  this  great  change  can  nowhere  be 
more  clearly  traced  than  in  the  Statute  Book.  The 
number  of  inclosure  acts  passed  since  King  George  the 
Second  came  to  the  throne  exceeds  four  thousand.  The 
area  inclosed  under  the  authority  of  those  acts  exceeds, 
on  a  moderate  calculation,  ten  thousand  square  miles. 
How  many  square  miles,  which  were  formerly  unculti- 
vated or  ill  cultivated,  have,  during  the  same  period, 
been  fenced  and  carefully  tilled  by  the  proprietors, 
without  any  application  to  the  legislature,  can  only  be 
conjectured.  But  it  seems  highly  probable  that  a 
fourth  part  of  England  has  been,  in  the  course  of 
little  more  than  a  century,  turned  from  a  wild  into  a 
garden. 

Even  in  those  parts  of  the  kingdom  which  at  the 
close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second  were  the  best 
cultivated,  the  farming,  though  greatly  im})roved  since 
the  civil  war,  was  not  such  as  would  now  be  thought 
skilful.  To  this  day  no  effectual  steps  have  been  taken 
by  public  authority  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  accu- 
rate accounts  of  the  produce  of  the  English  soil.  The 
historian  must  therefore  follow,  with  some  misgivings, 
the  guidance  of  those  writers  on  statistics  whose  reputa- 
tion for  diligence  and  fidelity  stands  highest.  At  pres- 
ent an  average  crop  of  wheat,  rye,  barley,  oats,  and 
beans,  is  supposed  considerably  to  exceed  thirty  mill- 
ions of  quarters.     The  crop  of  wheat  would  be  thought 

1  See  White's  Selhorne ;  Bell's  History  of  British  Quadrupeds;  Gentle- 
man's Rccreatinii,  1086;  Aul)ie_v's  Natural  Histor}- of  Wiltshire,  1G85;  Mor- 
ton's History  of  Norlhainptoushire,  1712;  Willougliby's  Ornitholog}-,  by 
Ray,  1678;  Latham's  General  Synopsis  of  Birds;  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne's 
Accoimt  of  15irds  found  in  Norfolk. 


C«.  m.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  845 

wretched  if  it  did  not  exceed  twelve  millions  of  quar- 
ters. According  to  the  computation  made  in  the  year 
1696  by  Gregory  King,  the  whole  quantity  of  wheat, 
rye,  barley,  oats,  and  beans,  then  animally  grown  in 
the  kingdom,  was  somewhat  less  than  ten  millions  of 
quarters.  The  wheat,  which  was  then  cultivated  only 
"on  the  strongest  clay,  and  consumed  only  by  those  who 
were  in  easy  circvimstances,  he  estimated  at  less  than 
two  millions  of  quarters.  Charles  Davenant,  an  acute 
and  well  informed  though  most  unprincipled  and  ran- 
corous politician,  diftered  from  King  as  to  some  of  the 
items  of  the  account,  but  came  to  nearly  the  same  gen- 
eral conclusions.^ 

The  rotation  of  crops  was  very  imperfectly  under- 
stood. It  was  known,  mdeed,  that  some  vegetables 
lately  introduced  into  our  island,  particularly  the  turnip, 
afforded  excellent  nutriment  in  winter  to  sheep  and 
oxen  :  but  it  was  not  yet  the  practice  to  feed  cattle  in 
this  manner.  It  was  therefore  by  no  means  easy  to 
keep  them  alive  during  the  season  when  the  grass  is 
scanty.  They  were  killed  and  salted  in  great  numbers 
at  the  bemnnino;  of  the  cold  weather  ;  and,  durinfj 
several  months,  even  the  gentry  tasted  scarcely  any 
fresh  animal  food,  except  game  and  river  fish,  which 
were  consequently  much  more  important  articles  in 
housekeeping  than  at  ^ircsent.  It  ap))ears  from  the 
Northumbei-Jand  Household  Book  that,  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Seventh,  fresh  meat  was  never  eaten  even 
by  the  gentlemen  attendant  on  a  great  Earl,  exce])t 
ilurin<T  the  short  interval  between  Midsummer  and 
Michaelmas.  But  in  tln"  course  of  two  centuries  an 
improvement  had  taken  jtlaro  ;  and  under  Charles  the 

i  Kin<;'8  Natural  and  Political  Conclusions.     Davenant  on  the  Balance 
of  Trade. 


346  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch   III. 

Second  it  was  not  till  the  bepinnino-  of  November  that 
families  laid  in  their  stock  of  salt  provisions,  then  called 
Martinmas  beef.^ 

The  sheep  and  the  ox  of  that  time  were  diminutive 
when  compared  with  the  sheep  and  oxen  which  are 
now  driven  to  our  markets. ^  Our  native  horses,  though 
serviceable,  were  held  in  small  esteem,  and  fetched  low 
prices.  Tliey  were  valued,  one  with  another,  by  the 
ablest  of  those  who  computed  the  national  w^ealth,  at 
not  more  than  fifty  shillings  each.  Foreign  breeds 
were  greatly  preferred.  Spanish  jennets  were  regarded 
as  the  finest  chargers,  and  Avere  imported  for  purposes 
of  pageantry  and  war.  The  coaches  of  the  aristocracy 
were  drawn  by  grey  Flemish  mares,  which  trotted,  as 
it  was  thought,  with  a  peculiar  grace,  and  endured 
better  than  any  cattle  reared  in  our  island  the  work 
of  dragging  a  ponderous  equipage  over  the  rugged 
pavement  of  London.  Neither  the  modern  dray  horse 
nor  the  modern  race  horse  was  then  known.  At  a 
much  later  period  the  ancestors  of  the  gigantic  quad- 
rupeds, which  all  foreigners  now  class  among  the  chief 
wonders  of  London,  were  brought  from  the  marshes 
of  Walcheren  ;  the  ancestors  of  Childers  and  Eclipse 
from  the  sands  of  Arabia.  Alreadv,  however,  there 
was  among  our  nobility  and  gentry  a  passion  for  the 
amusements  of  the  turf.  The  importance  of  improving 
our  studs  by  an  infusion  of  new  blood  was  strongly 
felt ;  and  with  this  view  a  considerable  number  of  barbs 
had  lately  been  brought  into  the  country.  Two  men 
wdiose  aiuthority  on  such  subjects  was  held  in  great 
esteem,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  and  Sir- John  Fenwick, 

1  See  the  Almanacks  of  1684  and  1685. 

2  See  Mr.  M'Culloch's  Statistical  Account  of  the  British  Empire,  Part  III 
vhap.  i.  sec.  6. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  347 

pronounced  that  the  meanest  liack  ever  imported  fi'om 
Tangier  would  produce  a  finer  progeny  than  could  be 
expected  from  the  best  sire  of  our  native  breed.  Tliey 
would  not  readily  liave  believed  that  a  time  would  come 
when  the  princes  and  nobles  of  neighbouring  lands 
would  be  as  eao-er  to  obtain  horses  from  England  as  ever 
the  English  had  been  to  obtain  horses  from  Bai'bary.^ 

The  increase  of  vegetable  and  animal  produce,  though 
great,  seems  small  when  comi^ared  with  the   Mineral 

•  f  •  1  1   1  T       ^  T  n  r      i  wealth  of 

nicrease  or  our  mineral  wealth,  in  Iboo  the  the  country. 
tin  of  Cornwall,  which  had,  more  than  two  thousand 
years  before,  attracted  the  Tyrian  sails  beyond  the 
pillars  of  Hercules,  was  still  one  of  the  most  valuable 
subterranean  productions  of  the  island.  The  quantity 
annually  extracted  from  the  earth  was  found  to  be, 
some  years  lyter,  sixteen  hundred  tons,  probably  about 
a  third  of  what  it  now  is.^  But  the  veins  of  copper 
which  lie  in  the  same  region  were,  in  the  time  of 
Charles  the  Second,  altogether  neglected,  nor  did  any 
landowner  take  tliem  into  the  account  in  estimating 
the  value  of  his  property.  Cornwall  and  Wales  at 
present  yield  annually  near  fifteen  thousand  tons  of 
copper,  worth  near  a  million  and  a  half  sterling;  that 
is  to  say,  worth  about  twice  as  much  as  the  annual 
produce  of  all  Englisli  mines  of  all  descriptions  in  the 
seventeenth  century .^     The  first  bed  of  rock  salt  had 

'  King  and  Davenaiit  as  before;  The  Duke  of  Newcastle  on  Horseman- 
sliij);  (Icntleinan'p  IJccrcatinn,  108G.  The  "  dappled  Flanders  mares"  were 
marks  of  p-ealncss  in  the  time  of  Pope,  and  even  later. 

The  vulfjar  proverb,  that  the  fjrey  mare  is  the  better  horse,  orifjinated,  I 
suspect,  in  the  preference  Kenerally  given  to  the  grey  mares  of  Flanders  over 
the  finest  coach  horses  of  Kngland. 

2  See  a  curious  note  by  Tonkin,  in  Lord  De  Dunstanville's  edition  of 
vlarew's  Survey  of  (^irnwiill. 

8  Borlase's  Natural  History  of  Cornwall,  1758.  The  quantity  of  copper 
now  produced,  I  have  taken   from   parliamentary   returns.     Davenant,  iu 


848  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

been  discovered  not  long  after  the  Restoration  in  Chesh- 
ire, but  does  not  appear  to  have  been  worked  in  that 
ae:e.  The  salt  which  was  obtained  by  a  rude  in'ocess 
from  brine  pits  was  held  in  no  high  estimation.  The 
pans  in  which  the  manufacture  was  carried  on  exhaled 
a  sulphurous  stench;  and,  when  the  evaporation  was 
complete,  the  substance  which  was  left  was  scarcely 
lit  to  be  used  with  food.  Physicians  attributed  the 
scorbutic  and  pulmonary  complaints  which  were  com- 
mon amontr  the  English  to  this  unwholesome  condi- 
ment.  It  was  therefore  seldom  used  by  the  upper  and 
middle  classes ;  and  there  was  a  regular  and  considera- 
ble importation  from  France.  At  present  our  springs 
and  mines  not  only  supi)ly  our  own  immense  demand, 
but  send  annually  more  than  seven  Irandred  millions 
of  pounds  of  excellent  salt  to  foreign  countries.^ 

Fi\Y  more  important  has  been  the  improvement  of 
our  iron  works.  Such  works  had  long  existed  in  our 
island,  but  had  not  ])rospered,  and  had  been  regarded 
with  no  favourable  eye  by  the  government  and  by  the 
public.  It  was  not  then  the  practice  to  employ  coal 
for  smelting  the  ore  ;  and  the  rapid  consumption  of 
wood  excited  the  alarm  of  politicians.  As  early  as 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth  there  had  been  loud  complaints 
that  whole  forests  were  cut  down  for  the  purpose  of 
feeding  the  furnaces  :  and  the  parliament  had  inter- 
fered to  prohibit  the  manuficturers  from  burning  tim- 
ber. The  manufacture  consequently  languished.  At 
the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  great  part 
of  the  ircm  which  was  used  in  the  country  was  imported 
from  abroad  ;  and  the  whole  quantity  cast  here  annu- 

1700,  estimated  the  annual  produce  of  all  the  mines  of  England  at  between 
jeven  and  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds. 

1  Philosophical  Transactions,  No.  53.  Nov.  1069,  No.  66.  Dec.  1670,  No 
X03.  May  1674,  No.  156.  Feb.  168|. 


Ch.  ni.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  849 

ally  seems  not  to  have  exceeded  ten  thousand  tons. 
At  present  the  trade  is  thought  to  be  in  a  depressed 
state  if  less  than  a  million  of  tons  are  produced  in  a 
year.^ 

One  minei'al,  perhaps  more  important  than  iron  it- 
self, remains  to  be  mentioned.  Coal,  though  very  little 
used  in  -any  species  of  manufacture,  was  already  the 
ordinary  fuel  in  some  districts  which  were  fortunate 
enough  to  possess  large  beds,  and  in  the  capital,  which 
could  easily  be  supplied  by  water  carriage.  It  seems 
reasonable  to  believe  that  at  least  one  half  of  the 
quantity  then  extracted  from  the  pits  was  consumed 
in  London.  The  consumption  of  London  seemed  to 
the  writers  of  that  age  enormous,  and  was  often  men- 
tioned by  them  as  a  proof  of  the  greatness  of  the  im- 
perial city.  They  scarcely  hoped  to  be  believed  when 
they  affirmed  that  two  luuulred  and  eighty  thousand 
chaldrons,  that  is  to  say,  about  three  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  tons,  were,  in  the  last  year  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Second,  brought  to  the  Thames.  At 
pi'esent  three  millions  and  a  half  of  tons  are  recjuircd 
yearly  by  the  metropolis  ;  and  the  whole  annual  pr(»(i- 
uce  cannot,  on  the  most  moderate  computation,  by 
estimated  at  less  than  thirty  millions  of  tons.^ 

While  these  great  changes  have   been  in   progress, 
the  rent  of  land  has,  as  might  be   expected,   increase  of 
been  almost  constantly  rising.     In  some  dis-  '^""" 
tricts  it  has  multiplied  more  than  tenfold.     In  some  it 

1  Yarraiiton,  Eiifjland's  Improvement  by  Sea  and  Land,  1G77;  I'orter's 
I'rogress  of  the  Nation.  See  also  a  reniaikahly  perspicuous  history,  in 
small  compass,  of  the  Knf;lish  iron  works,  in  Mr.  M'Cullocirs  Statistical 
Account  of  the  British  Kinpire. 

2  See  Chunibfrlayiie's  Stale  of  England,  1G84,  IGST;  An<;li;e  Mctro])<iIis, 
Ifi'Jl;  M't'nlloch's  Statistical  Account  of  the  lirilish  Kni[)ire,  Part  111. 
chap.  ii.  (edition  of  1847).  In  1845  the  quantity  of  coal  brought  into  Lon- 
don appeared,  by  the  parliamentary  returns,  to  be  3,400  000  tons.     J 848. 


850  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cif.  HI. 

has  not  more  tlian  doubled.  It  has  probably,  on  the 
average,  quadrupled. 

Of  the  rent,  a  large  proportion  was  divided  among 
the  country  gentlemen,  a  class  of  persons  whose  posi- 
tion and  character  it  is  most  important  that  we  should 
clearly  understand  ;  for  by  their  inflvience  and  by  their 
passions  the  fate  of  the  nation  was,  at  several  important 
conjunctures,  determined. 

We  should  be  much  mistaken  if  we  pictured  to  our- 
The  count  sclves  the  squires  of  the  seventeenth  century 
gentlemen,  jjg  j^q^  bearing;  a  close  resemblance  to  their 
descendants,  the  county  members  and  chairmen  of 
quarter  sessions  with  whom  we  are  familiar.  The 
modern  country  gentleman  generally  receives  a  liberal 
education,  passes  from  a  distinguished  school  to  a  dis- 
tinguished college,  and  has  every  opportunity  to  be- 
come an  excellent  scholar.  He  has  generally  seen 
something  of  foreign  countries.  A  considerable  part 
of  his  life  has  generally  been  passed  in  the  capital ;  and 
the  refinements  of  the  capital  follow  him  into  the  coun- 
try. There  is  perhaps  no  class  of  dwellings  so  pleasing 
as  the  rural  seats  of  the  English  gentry.  In  the  parks 
and  pleasure  grounds,  nature,  dressed  yet  not  disguised 
by  art,  wears  her  most  alluring  form.  In  the  build- 
ings, good  sense  and  good  taste  combine  to  produce  a 
happy  union  of  the  comfortable  and  the  graceful.  The 
pictures,  the  musical  instruments,  the  library,  would 
in  any  other  country  be  considered  as  proving  the 
owner  to  be  an  eminently  polished  and  accomplished 
man.  A  country  gentleman  who  witnessed  the  Revo- 
lution was  probably  in  receipt  of  about  a  fourth  part 
of  the  rent  which  his  acres  now  yield  to  his  posterity. 
He  was,  therefore,  as  compared  with  his  posterity,  a 
poor  man,  and  was  generally  under  the  necessity  of 


Ch.  HI]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1G85.  351 

residing,  witli  little  interruption,  on  his  estate.  To 
travel  on  the  Continent,  to  nuiintain  an  establishment 
in  London,  or  even  to  visit  London  frequently,  were 
pleasures  in  which  only  the  great  jjroprietors  could 
indulge.  It  may  be  confidently  affirmed  that  of  the 
squires  whose  names  were  then  in  the  Commissions 
of  Peace  and  Lieutenancy  not  one  in  twenty  went 
to  town  once  in  fi:ve  years,  or  had  ever  in  his  life 
wandered  so  far  as  Paris.  Many  lords  of  manors 
had  received  an  education  differing  little  from  that 
of  their  menial  servants.  The  heir  of  an  estate  of- 
ten passed  his  boyhood  and  youth  at  the  seat  of  his 
family  with  no  better  tutors  than  grooms  and  game- 
keepers, and  scarce  attained  learning  enough  to  sign 
his  name  to  a  Mittimus.  If  he  went  to  school  and  to 
college,  he  generally  returned  before  he  was  twenty 
to  the  seclusion  of  the  old  hall,  and  there,  unless  his 
mind  were  very  happily  constituted  by  nature,  soon 
forgot  his  academical  pursuits  in  rural  business  and 
pleasures.  His  chief  serious  employment  was  the  care 
of  his  property.  He  examined  samples  of  grain,  han- 
dled pigs,  and,  on  market  days,  made  bargains  over  a 
tankard  with  drovers  and  hop  merchants.  His  chief 
pleasures  were  commonly  derived  from  field  sports  and 
from  an  unrefined  sensnalitv.  His  lano-uage  and  pro- 
nunriation  were  such  as  we  should  now  expect  to  hear 
only  from  the  most  ignorant  clowns.  His  oaths,  coarse 
jests,  and  scurrilous  terms  of  abuse,  were  uttered  with 
the  broadest  accent  of  his  ])rovince.  It  was  easy  to 
discern,  from  the  first  Avords  which  he  spoke,  whether 
he  came  from  Somersetshire  or  Yorkshire.  He  troub- 
led himself  little  iibout  decorating  his  abode,  and,  if  he 
attempted  decoration,  seldom  jM'oduced  anything  but 
d(!formitv.     Tlie  litter  of  a  farmvard  gathered  under 


352  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

the  windows  of  his  bedchamher,  and  the  cabbages  and 
gooseberry  bushes  grew  close  to  his  hall  door.  His 
table  was  loaded  with  coarse  plenty  ;  and  guests  were 
cordially  Avelcomed  to  it.  But,  as  the  habit  of  drink- 
incj  to  excess  was  general  in  the  class  to  which  he  be- 
lono;ed,  and  as  his  fortune  did  not  enable  him  to  in- 
toxicate  large  assemblies  daily  with  claret  or  canary, 
strong  beer  was  the  ordinary  beverage.  The  quantity 
of  beer  consumed  in  those  days  was  indeed  enormous. 
For  beer  then  was  to  the  middle  and  lower  classes, 
not  only  all  that  beer  now  is,  but  all  that  wine,  tea,  and 
ardent  spirits  now  are.  It  was  only  at  great  houses, 
or  on  great  occasions,  that  foreign  drink  was  placed 
on  the  board.  The  ladies  of  the  house,  whose  business 
it  had  commonly  been  to  cook  the  repast,  retired 
as  soon  as  the  dishes  had  been  devoured,  and  left 
the  gentlemen  to  their  ale  and  tobacco.  The  coarse 
jollity  of  the  afternoon  was  often  prolonged  till  the 
revellers  were  laid  under  the  table. 

It  was  very  seldom  that  the  country  gentleman  caught 
glimpses  of  the  great  world  ;  and  what  he  saw  of  it 
tended  rather  to  confuse  than  to  enlio-hten  his  under- 
standing.  His  opinions  respecting  religion,  govern- 
ment, foreign  countries  and  former  times,  having  been 
derived,  not  from  study,  from  observation,  or  from  con- 
versation with  enlightened  companions,  but  from  such 
traditions  as  were  current  in  his  own  small  circle,  were 
the  opinions  of  a  child.  He  adhered  to  them,  how- 
ever, with  the  obstinacy  which  is  generally  found  in 
ignoi'ant  men  accustomed  to  be  fed  with  flattery.  His 
animosities  w^ere  numerous  and  bitter.  He  hated 
Frenchmen  and  Italians,  Scotchmen  and  Irishmen, 
Papists  and  Presbyterians,  Independents  and  Baptists, 
Quakers  and  Jews.     Towards  London  and  Londoners 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  353 

he  felt  an  aversion  which  more  than  once  produced 
important  political  effects.  His  wife  and  daughter 
Avere  in  tastes  and  acquirements  below  a  housekeeper 
or  a  stillroom  maid  of  the  present  day.  They  stitched 
and  spun,  brewed  gooseberry  wine,  cured  marigolds, 
and  made  the  crust  for  the  venison  pasty. 

From  this  description  it  might  be  supposed  that  the 
English  esquire  of  the  seventeenth  century  did  not  ma- 
terially differ  from  a  rustic  miller  or  alehouse  keeper 
of  our  time.  There  are,  however,  some  important  parts 
of  his  character  still  to  be  noted,  which  will  ffreatlv 
modify  this  estimate.  Unlettered  as  he  was  and  un- 
polished, he  was  still  in  some  most  important  points  a 
gentleman.  He  was  a  member  of  a  proud  and  power- 
ful aristocracy,  and  was  distinguished  by  many  both 
of  the  good  and  of  the  bad  qualities  which  belong  to 
aristocrats.  His  flimily  pride  was  beyond  that  of  a 
Talbot  or  a  Howard.  He  knew  the  genealogies  and 
coats  of  arms  of  all  his  neighbours,  and  could  tell 
which  of  them  had  assumed  supporters  without  any 
right,  and  which  of  them  Avere  so  unfortmiate  as  to  bo 
great  grandsons  of  aldermen.  He  was  a  magistrate, 
and,  as  such,  administered  gratuitously  to  those  who 
dwelt  around  him  a  rude  patriarchal  justice,  which,  in 
spite  of  inmuncrable  blunders  and  of  occasional  acts 
of  tyranny,  was  yet  better  than  no  justice  at  all.  He 
was  an  officer  of  the  trainbands  ;  and  his  military  dig- 
nity, though  it  might  move  the  mirth  of  gallants  who 
had  served  a  camj)aign  in  Flanders,  raised  his  charac- 
ter in  his  own  eyes  and  in  the  eyes  of  his  neighbours. 
Nor  indeed  was  his  soldiership  justly  a  subject  of  deri- 
sion. In  every  coimty  there  Avere  elderly  gentlemen 
who  had  seen  service  which  Avas  no  chihrs  l)lay.  One 
had  been    knighted    by   Charles    the   First,   after   th»« 

VOL.  I.  23 


354  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  rCn.  Ill 

battle  of  Edgehill.  Another  still  wore  a  patch  over  the 
scar  which  he  had  received  at  Naseby.  A  third  had 
defended  his  old  house  till  Fairfax  had  blown  in  the 
door  with  a  petard.  The  presence  of  these  old  Cava- 
liers, with  their  old  swords  and  holsters,  and  with  their 
old  stories  about  Goring  and  Lunsford,  gave  to  the 
musters  of  militia  an  earnest  and  warlike  aspect  which 
would  otherwise  have  been  wanting.  Even  those 
country  gentlemen  who  were  too  young  to  have  them- 
selves exchanged  blows  Avith  the  cuirassiers  of  the  Par- 
liament had,  from  childhood,  been  suri'ounded  by  the 
traces  of  recent  war,  and  fed  with  stories  of  the  mar- 
tial exploits  of  their  fathers  and  uncles.  Thus  the 
character  of  the  English  esquire  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  compounded  of  two  elements  which  we  are 
not  accustomed  to  find  united.  His  ignorance  and  un- 
couthness,  his  low  tastes  and  gross  plu^ases,  would,  in 
our  time,  be  considered  as  indicating  a  nature  and  a 
breeding  thoroughly  plebeian.  Yet  he  was  essentially 
a  patrician,  and  had,  in  large  measure,  both  the  virtues 
and  the  vices  which  floui'ish  amono;  men  set  from  their 
birth  in  high  place,  and  used  to  respect  themselves 
and  to  be  resj)ected  by  others.  It  is  not  easy  for  a 
generation  which  is  accustomed  to  find  chivalrous  sen- 
timents only  in  company  with  liberal  studies  and  pol- 
ished manners  to  image  to  itself  a  man  with  the  de- 
portment, the  vocabulary,  and  the  accent  of  a  carter, 
yet  punctilious  on  matters  of  genealogy  and  pi-ecedence, 
and  ready  to  risk  his  life  rather  than  see  a  stain  cast  on 
the  honour  of  his  house.  It  is  however  only  by  thus 
j.oining  together  things  seldom  or  never  found  together 
in  our  own  experience,  that  we  can  form  a  just  idea  of 
that  rustic  aristocracy  which  constituted  the  main 
strength  of  the  armies  of  Charles  the  First,  and  which 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  355 

long  supported,   with  strange  fidelity,  the  interest  of 
his  descendants. 

Tlie  gross,  uneducated,  untravelled  country  gentle- 
man was  commonly  a  Tory  :  but,  though  devotedly 
attached  to  hereditary  monarchy,  he  had  no  partiality 
for  courtiers  and  ministers.  He  thought,  not  without 
reason,  that  Whitehall  was  filled  with  the  most  corrupt 
of  mankind  ;  that  of  the  great  sums  which  the  House 
of  Commons  had  voted  to  the  crown  since  the  Resto- 
ration part  had  been  embezzled  by  cunning  politicians, 
and  part  squandered  on  buffoons  and  foreign  courtesans. 
His  stout  English  heart  swelled  with  indio-nation  at  the 
thought  that  the  government  of  his  country  should  be 
subject  to  French  dictation.  Being  himself  generally 
an  old  Cavalier,  or  the  son  of  an  old  Cavalier,  he  re- 
flected with  bitter  resentment  on  the  in£i;ratitude  with 
which  the  Stuarts  had  requited  their  best  friends. 
Those  who  heard  him  grumble  at  the  nearlect  with 
which  he  was  treated,  and  at  the  jirofusion  with  which 
wealth  was  lavished  on  the  bastards  of  Nell  Gwynn 
and  Madam  Carwell,  would  have  supposed  him  ripe 
for  rebellion.  But  all  this  ill  humour  lasted  only  till 
the  throne  was  really  in  danger.  It  was  precisely  when 
those  whom  the  sovereign  had  loaded  with  wealth  and 
honours  shrank  from  his  side  that  the  country  gentle- 
men, so  surly  and  mutinous  in  the  season  of  his  pros- 
j)erity,  rallied  round  him  in  a  body.  Thus,  after  mur- 
muring twenty  years  at  the  misgovernment  of  Charles 
the  Second,  they  came  to  his  rescue  in  his  extremity, 
when  his  own  Secretaries  of  State  and  Lords  of  the 
Treasury  had  deserted  him,  and  enabled  him  to  gain  a 
c()m])lete  victory  over  the  o])position  ;  nor  can  there  be 
any  doubt  that  they  would  have  shown  equal  loyalty 
to  his  brother  James,  if  James  would,  even  at  the  last 


356  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

moment,  have  refrained  from  outragino;  their  strono-est 
feeling.  For  there  was  one  institution,  and  one  only, 
which  they  prized  even  more  than  hereditary  mon- 
archy ;  and  that  institution  was  the  Church  of  England. 
Their  love  of  the  Church  was  not,  indeed,  the  effect 
of  study  or  meditation.  Few  among  them  could  have 
given  any  reason,  drawn  from  Scriptui'e  or  ecclesiasti- 
cal history,  for  adhering  to  her  doctrines,  her  ritual, 
and  her  polity ;  nor  were  they,  as  a  class,  by  any 
means  strict  observers  of  that  code  of  morality  which 
is  common  to  all  Christian  sects.  But  the  experience 
of  many  ages  proves  that  men  may  be  ready  to  fight 
to  the  death,  and  to  persecute  without  pity,  for  a  re- 
ligion Avhose  creed  they  do  not  understand,  and  whose 
precepts  they  habitually  disobey.^ 

The  rural  clergy  were  even  more  vehement  in  Tory- 
ism than  the  rural  o-entry,  and  were  a  class 

The  clergy.  _     _  o  .'  '   ^ 

scarcely  less  important.  It  is  to  be  observed, 
however,  that  the  individual  clergyman,  as  compared 
with  the  individual  gentleman,  then  ranked  much  lower 
than  in  our  days.  The  main  support  of  the  Church 
was  derived  from  the  tithe  ;  and  the  tithe  bore  to 
the  rent  a  much  smaller  ratio  than  at  present.  King 
estimated  the  whole  income  of  the  parochial  and  col- 
legiate clergy  at  only  four  liundred  and  eighty  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year  ;  Davenant  at  only  five  hundred 
and  forty-four  thousand  a  year.  It  is  certainly  now 
more  than  seven  times  as  great  as  the  larger  of  these 
two  sums.  The  average  rent  of  the  land  has  not, 
according  to  any  estimate,  increased  proportionally. 
It  follows  that  rectors  and  vicars  must  have  been,  as 

1  My  notion  of  the  country  gentleman  of  the  seveiiteentli  century  has 
been  derived  from  sources  too  numerous  to  be  recapitulated.  I  must  leave 
my  description  to  the  judgment  of  those  who  have  studied  the  history  and 
the  lighter  literature  of  that  age. 


Ch   in.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  357 

compared  with  the  nciglibouring  knights  and  squires, 
much  poorer  in  the  seventeenth  than  in  tlie  nineteenth 
century. 

The  place  of  the  clergyman  in  society  had  been  com- 
pletely changed  by  the  Reformation.  Before  that  event, 
ecclesiastics  had  formed  tlie  majority  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  had,  in  wealth  and  splendour,  equalled,  and 
sometimes  outsljone,  the  greatest  of  the  temporal  bar- 
ons, and  had  generally  held  the  highest  civil  offices. 
Many  of  the  Treasurers,  and  almost  all  the  Chancel- 
lors of  the  Plantagenets  were  Bishops.  The  Lord 
Keei)er  of  the  Privy  Seal  and  the  Master  of  the  Rolls 
wcri'  ordinarily  churchmen.  Churchmen  ti'ansacted 
the  most  inqjortant  diplomatic  business.  Indeed,  all 
that  large  portion  of  the  administration  which  rude 
and  wailike  nobles  were  incompetent  to  conduct  was 
considered  as  especially  belonging  to  divines.  Men, 
therefore,  who  were  averse  to  the  life  of  camps,  and 
who  were,  at  the  same  time,  desirous  to  rise  in  the 
state,  connnonly  received  the  tonsure.  Among  them 
were  sons  of  all  the  most  illustrious  families,  and  near 
kinsmen  of  the  throne.  Scroops  and  Nevilles,  Bour- 
chiers,  Staffords,  and  Poles.  To  the  religious  houses 
belonged  the  rents  of  immense  domains,  and  all  that 
lai'ge  poi'tioii  of  the  tithe  which  is  now  in  the  hands 
of  laymen.  Down  to  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Henry 
the  Eighth,  tlierefore,  no  line  of  life  bore  so  inviting  an 
aspect  to  ambitious  and  covetous  natures  as  the  priest- 
hood. Then  came  a  violent  revolution.  The  abolition 
of  the  monasteries  deprived  the  Church  at  once  of  the 
greater  part  of  her  wealth,  and  of  her  predominance  in 
the  Upper  House  of  Parliament.  There  was  no  longer 
an  Abbot  of  Glastonbury  or  an  Abbot  of  Reading  seated 
among  the  peers,  and  possessed  of  revenues  equal  to 


358  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

those  of  a  powerfiil  Earl.  The  princely  splendour  of 
William  of  Wykehani  and  of  William  of  Waynflete  had 
disappeared.  The  scarlet  hat  of  the  Cardinal,  the  sil- 
ver cross  of  the  Legate,  were  no  more.  The  clergy 
had  also  lost  the  ascendency  which  is  the  natural  re- 
ward of  superior  mental  cultivation.  Once  the  cir- 
cumstance that  a  man  could  read  had  raised  a  presump- 
tion that  he  was  in  orders.  But,  in  an  age  which 
produced  such  laymen  as  William  Cecil  and  Nicholas 
Bacon,  Roger  Ascham  and  Thomas  Smith,  Walter 
Mildmay  and  Francis  Walsingham,  there  was  no  reason 
for  calling  away  prelates  from  their  dioceses  to  negoti- 
ate treaties,  to  superintend  the  finances,  or  to  administer 
justice.  The  spiritual  cliaracter  not  only  ceased  to  be 
a  qualification  for  high  civil  office,  but  began  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  disqualification.  Those  worldly  motives, 
therefore,  which  had  formerly  induced  so  many  able, 
aspirmg,  and  liigh  born  youths  to  assume  the  ecclesi- 
astical habit,  ceased  to  operate.  Not  one  parish  in  two 
hundred  then  afforded  what  a  man  of  family  considered 
as  a  maintenance.  There  were  still  indeed  prizes  in 
the  Church  :  but  thev  were  few  ;  and  even  the  highest 
were  mean,  when  compai'ed  with  the  glory  which  had 
once  surrounded  the  princes  of  the  hierarchy.  The 
state  kept  by  Parker  and  Grindal  seemed  beggarly  to 
those  who  remembered  the  imperial  pomp  of  Wolsey, 
his  palaces,  which  had  become  the  favourite  abodes 
of  royalty,  Whitehall  and  Hampton  Court,  the  three 
sumptuous  tables  daily  spread  in  his  refectory,  the 
forty-four  gorgeous  copes  in  his  chapel,  his  running 
footmen  in  rich  liveries,  and  his  body  guards  with 
gilded  poleaxes.  Thus  the  sacerdotal  office  lost  its 
attraction  for  the  higher  classes.  During  the  century 
which  followed  the  accession  of   Elizabeth,   scarce  a 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  359 

single  person  of  noble  descent  took  orders.  At  tiie 
close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  t<vo  sons  of 
peers  were  Bishops  ;  four  or  five  sons  of  peers  were 
priests,  and  held  valuable  preferment ;  but  these  rare 
exceptions  did  not  take  away  the  reproach  Vhich  lay 
on  the  body.  The  clergy  were  regarded  as,  on  the 
whole,  a  plebeian  class.  And,  indeed,  for  one  who 
made  the  figure  of  a  gentleman,  ten  were  mere  menial 
servants.  A  large  proportion  of  those  divines  who  had 
no  benefices,  or  whose  benefices  were  too  small  to  afford 
a  comfortable  revenue,  lived  in  the  houses  of  laymen. 
It  had  long  been  evident  that  this  practice  tended  to 
degrade  the  priestly  character.  Laud  had  exerted 
himself  to  effect  a  change  ;  and  Charles  the  First  had 
repeatedly  issued  positive  orders  that  none  but  men  of 
high  rank  should  presume  to  keep  domestic  chaplains.^ 
But  these  injunctions  had  become  obsolete.  Indeed, 
during  the  domination  of  the  Puritans,  many  of  the 
ejected  ministers  of  the  Church  of  England  could  ob- 
tain bread  and  shelter  only  by  attaching  themselves  to 
the  households  of  royalist  gentlemen  ;  and  the  habits 
which  had  been  formed  in  those  times  of  trouble  con- 
tinued long  after  the  reestablishment  of  monarchy  and 
episcopacy.  Jn  the  mansions  of  men  of  liberal  senti- 
ments and  cultivated  understandings,  the  chaplain  Avas 
doubtless  treated  witli  urbanity  and  kindness.  His 
conversation,  his  literary  assistance,  his  sj)iritual  ad- 
vice, were  considered  as  an  amj^le  return  for  his  food, 
his  lodging,  and  his  stipend.  But  this  was  not  the  gen- 
eral feeling  of  the  country  gentlemen.  The  coarse  and 
iunoi-ant  sfinire  who  tiioun-Jit  that  it  belouired  to  his 
dignity  to  have  grace  said  every  day  at  his  table  by  an 
ecclesiastic  in  fiill  canonicals,  found  means  to  I'econcile 
1  See  Heylin's  Cj'prianus  Anglicus. 


360  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

dignity  with  economy.  A  young  Levite  —  such  Avas 
the  phrase  then  in  use  —  might  be  had  for  his  board, 
a  small  garret,  and  ten  pounds  a  year,  and  might  not 
only  perform  his  own  professional  functions,  might  not 
only  be  the  most  patient  of  butts  and  of  listeners,  might 
not  only  be  always  ready  in  fine  weather  for  bowls,  and 
in  rainy  weather  for  shovelboard,  but  might  also  save 
the  expense  of  a  gardener,  or  of  a  groom.  Sometimes 
the  reverend  man  nailed  up  the  apricots,  and  some- 
times he  curried  the  coach  horses.  He  cast  up  the 
farrier's  bills.  He  walked  ten  miles  with  a  message 
or  a  parcel.  He  was  permitted  to  dine  with  the  fam- 
ily ;  but  he  was  expected  to  content  himself  with  the 
plainest  fare.  He  might  fill  himself  with  the  corned 
beef  and  the  carrots  :  but,  as  soon  as  the  tarts  and 
cheesecakes  made  their  a])pearance,  he  quitted  his 
seat,  and  stood  aloof  till  he  was  summoned  to  return 
thanks  for  the  repast,  from  a  great  part  of  which  he 
had  been  excluded. ^ 

Perhaps,  after  some  years  of  service,  he  was  pre- 
sented to  a  living  sufficient  to  support  him  :  but  he 
often  found  it  necessary  to  purchase  his  preferment  by 
a  species  of  Simony,  which  furnished  an  inexhaustible 
subject  of  pleasantry  to  three  or  four  generations  of 
scoffers.  With  his  cure  he  Avas  expected  to  take  a 
wife.  The  wife  had  ordinarily  been  in  the  patron's 
service  ;  and  it  was  Avell  if  she  was  not  suspected  of 
standing  too  high  in  the  patron's  favour.  Indeed,  the 
nature  of  the  matrimonial  connections  Avhich  the  clei'gy- 
men  of  that  age  were  in  the  habit  of  forming  is  the  most 
certain  indication  of  the   place  which  the  order  held  in 

1  Eachard,  Causes  of  tlie  Contempt  of  the  Clergy;  Oldham,  Satire  ad- 
dressed to  a  Friend  about  to  leave  the  University;  Tatler,  255.  258.  That 
the  English  clergy  were  a  lowborn  class,  is  remarked  in  the  Travels  of  the 
Grand  Duke  Cosmo.  Appendix  A. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  361 

the  social  system.  An  Oxonian,  writino;  a  few  montlis 
after  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second,  complained  bit- 
terly, not  only  that  the  countr}''  attorney  and  the  coun- 
try apothecary  looked  down  with  disdain  on  the  country 
clergyman,  but  that  one  of  the  lessons  most  earnestly 
inculcated  on  every  girl  of  honourable  family  was  to 
give  no  encouragement  to  a  lover  in  orders,  and  that, 
if  any  young  lady  forgot  this  precept,  she  was  almost  as 
liiuch  disgraced  as  by  an  illicit  amour.^  Clarendon,  who 
assuredly  bore  no  ill  will  to  the  priesthood,  mentions 
it  as  a  sign  of  the  confusion  of  I'anks  which  the  great 
rebellion  had  produced,  that  some  damsels  of  noble 
families  had  bestowed  themselves  on  divines. ^  A  wait- 
ing W(ini;'.n  was  generally  considered  as  the  most  suit- 
able helpmate  for  a  parson.  Qneen  Elizabeth,  as  head 
of  the  Church,  had  given  what  seemed  to  be  a  formal 
sanction  to  this  prejudice,  by  issuing  special  orders  that 
no  clergyman  should  })resurae  to  espouse  a  servant  girl, 
without  the  consent  of  the  master  or  mistress."^  During 
several  generations  accordingly  the  relation  between 
divines  and  handmaidens  was  a  theme  for  endless  jest ; 
nor  would  it  be  easy  to  find,  in  the  comedy  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  a  single  instance  of  a  clergyman  who 
wins  a  spouse  above  the  rank  of  a  cook.''    'Even  so  late 

1  "  A  cansidico,  niedicastro,  ipsaque  artificiim  farragine,  ecclesiaj  rector 
aut  vicariiis  coiitciiwiitur  et  lit  ludibrio.  Geiitis  et  fainiliiu  iiitor  ?acris  ordi- 
niiiiit;  ppllutus  ct'iisctiir:  iVjeniiiii.siiue  natalitio  iiisif^nibiis  uiiicuiii  inculcatur 
sippius  pra-ceptuni,  ne  modesfias  naufriigiuin  faciant,  aut,  (quod  idem  auri- 
l)iis  laui  delitntulis  sonat,)  ne  rlcrico  se  nuptas  d;tri  jiatiautur."  Angliaj 
Niititia,  Ijy  T.  \\'(i<jd.  of  New  College,  Oxford,  lG3ii. 

■•^  Ciarrndon's  Lil'e,  ii.  21. 

8  Ssc  the  Injunctions  of  1559,  iu  Bislinp  Sjiarrow's  Collocfion.  Jeremy 
Collier,  in  his  Kssay  on  Pridi-,  speaks  of  this  injunction  with  a  bitterness 
which  proves  that  his  own  pride  had  not  been  cflcitually  tamed. 

■i  Uoger  and  .\bigaii  in  IMctclier's  Scornful  I-ady,  Bull  and  the  Nurse  in 
Vanbrugh  8  Kelapse.  Smirk  and  Susan  in  Shadwell's  Lancashire  Witches, 
live  instaiucs. 


362  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIT 

as  the  time  of  George  the  Second,  the  keenest  of  all 
observers  of  h'fe  and  manners,  himself  a  jiriest,  re- 
marked that,  in  a  great  household,  the  chaplain  was  the 
resource  of  a  lady's  maid  whose  character  had  been 
blown  upon,  and  who  was  therefore  forced  to  give  up 
hopes  of  catching  the  steward.^ 

In  general  the  divine  who  quitted  his  chaplainship 
for  a  benefice  and  a  Avife  found  that  he  had  only  ex- 
changed one  class  of  vexations  for  anothei".  Hardly 
living  in  fifty  enabled  the  incumbent  to  bring  up  a 
family  comfortably.  As  children  multiplied  and  grew, 
the  household  of  the  priest  became  more  and  more  beg- 
garly. Holes  appeared  more  and  more  plainly  in  the 
thatch  of  his  parsonage  and  in  his  single  cassock.  Often 
it  was  only  by  toiling  on  his  glebe,  by  feeding  swine, 
and  by  loading  dungcarts,  that  he  could  obtain  daily 
bread  ;  nor  did  his  utmost  exertions  always  prevent  the 
bailiffs  from  taking  his  concordance  and  his  inkstand  in 
execution.  It  Avas  a  white  day  on  which  he  w^as  ad- 
mitted into  the  kitchen  of  a  great  house,  and  regaled  by 
the  servants  with  cold  meat  and  ale.  His  children  were 
brought  up  like  the  children  of  the  neighbouring  peas- 
antry. His  boys  folloAved  the  plough  ;  and  his  girls 
went  out  to  service.  Study  he  found  impossible  :  for 
the  advowson  of  his  livino;  would  hardly  have  sold  for  a 
sum  sufficient  to  purchase  a  good  theological  library  ; 
and  he  might  be  considered  as  unusually  lucky  if  he 
had  ten  or  twelve  dogeared  volumes  among  the  pots 
and  pans  on  his  shelves.  Even  a  keen  and  strong  in- 
tellect might  be  expected  to  rust  in  so  unfavourable  a 
situation. 

Assuredly  there  was  at  that  time  no  lack  in  the 
English  Church  of  ministers  distinguished  by  abilities 

1  Swift's  Directions  to  Servants. 


Ch.  hi.]  state   op    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  363 

and  learnino;.  But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  tliese  min- 
isters  were  not  scattei'cd  among  tlie  rural  population. 
They  were  brought  together  at  a  few  places  where  the 
means  of  acquiring  knowledge  were  abundant,  and 
where  the  opportunities  of  vigorous  intellectual  exercise 
were  frequent.^  At  such  places  were  to  be  found  di- 
vines qualified  by  parts,  by  eloquence,  by  wide  knowl- 
edge of  literature,  of  science,  and  of  life,  to  defend  their 
Church  victoriously  against  heretics  and  sceptics,  to 
command  the  attention  of  frivolous  and  worldly  congre- 
gations, to  guide  the  deliberations  of  senates,  and  to 
make  religion  respectable,  even  in  the  most  dissolute  of 
courts.  Some  laboured  to  fathom  the  abysses  of  meta- 
physical theology ;  some  were  deeply  versed  in  biblical 
criticism ;  and  some  threw  light  on  the  darkest  parts 
of  ecclesiastical  history.  Some  proved  themselves  con- 
summate masters  of  logic.  Some  cultivated  rhetoric 
with  such  assiduity  and  success  that  their  discourses  are 
still  justly  valued  as  models  of  style.  These  eminent 
men  were  to  be  found,  with  scarcely  a  single  exception, 
at  the  Universities,  at  the  great  Cathedrals,  or  in  the 
capital.  Barrow  had  lately  died  at  Cambridge ;  and 
Pearson  had  gone  thence  to  the  episcopal  bench.  Cud- 
worth  and  Heiu'v  More  were  still  living  there.  South 
and  Pocockc,  Jane  and  Aldrich,  were  at  Oxford.  Pri- 
deaux  was  in  the  close  of  Norwich,  and  Whitby  in  the 
close  of  Salisbury.  But  it  was  cliiefly  by  the  London 
clergy,  who  were  always  spoken  of  as  a  class  apart,  that 
the  fame  of  their  profession  for  learning  and  eloqiience 
was  upheld.  The  principal  pulpits  of  the  metropoHs 
were  occupied  abovit  this  time  by  a  croAvd  of  distin- 

1  This  distinction  between  onuiitry  clerpy  ami  town  clergy  is  strongly 
marked  l)y  Kacliard,  and  cannot  l)ut  be  observed  by  every  person  vlio  han 
studied  tlio  ecclesiastical  liistor^'  of  that  age. 


w 


364  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IU. 

miished  men,  from  amons  vvliom  Avas  selected  a  larcre 
proportion  of  the  rulers  of  the  Cinu'ch.  Sherlock 
preached  at  the  Temple,  Tillotson  at  Lmcoln's  Inn, 
Wake  and  Jeremy  Collier  at  Gray's  Inn,  Burnet  at  the 
Rolls,  Stillingfleet  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  Patrick  at 
St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden,  Fowler  at  St.  Giles's,  Crip- 
plegate,  Sharp  at  St.  Giles's  in  the  Fields,  Tenlson  at 
St.  Martin's,  Sprat  at  St.  Margaret's,  Beveridge  at  St. 
Peter's  in  Cornhill.  Of  these  twelve  men,  all  of  high 
note  in  ecclesiastical  history,  ten  became  Bishops,  and 
four  Archbishops.  Meanwhile  almost  the  only  im- 
portant theological  works  which  came  forth  from  a  rural 
parsonage  were  those  of  George  Bull,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  St.  David's ;  and  Bull  never  would  have  produced 
those  works,  had  he  not  inherited  an  estate,  by  the  sale 
of  which  he  was  enabled  to  collect  a  library,  such  as 
probably  no  other  country  clergyman  hi  England  pos- 
sessed.^ 

Thus  the  Anglican  priesthood  was  divided  into  two 
sections,  which,  in  acquirements,  in  manners,  and  in 
social  position,  differed  widely  from  each  other.  One 
section,  trained  for  cities  and  courts,  comprised  men 
familiar  with  all  ancient  and  modern  learning ;  men 
able  to  encounter  Hobbes  or  Bossuet  at  all  the  weapons 
of  controversy ;  men  who  coidd,  in  their  sermons,  set 
forth  the  majesty  and  beauty  of  Christianity  with  such 
justness  of  thought,  and  such  energy  of  language,  that 
the  indolent  Charles  roused  himself  to  listen,  and  the 
fastidious  Bucki no-ham  forjrot  to  sneer ;  men  whose 
address,  politeness,  and  knowledge  of  the  world  quali- 
fied them  to  manage  the  consciences  of  the  wealthy  and 

1  Nelson's  Life  of  Bull.  As  to  the  extreme  difficulty  which  the  country 
clergy  found  in  procuring  books,  see  the  Life  of  Thomas  Bray,  the  foundei 
of  the  Socief  V  for  the  Propacation  uf  the  Gospu!. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN    1G85.  365 

noble ;  men  with  whom  Hahfax  loved  to  disciiss  the 
interests  of  empires,  and  from  whom  Dryden  was  not 
ashamed  to  own  that  he  had  learned  to  write. ^  The 
other  section  was  destined  to  ruder  and  humbler  ser- 
vice. It  was  dispersed  over  the  country,  and  consisted 
chiefly  of  persons  not  at  all  wealtiiier,  and  not  much 
more  refined,  than  small  iarmers  or  upper  servants. 
Yet  it  was  in  these  rustic  priests,  who  derived  but  a 
scanty  subsistence  from  their  tithe  sheaves  and  tithe 
pigs,  and  who  had  not  the  smallest  chance  of  ever 
attaining  high  professional  honours,  that  the  profes- 
sional spirit  was  strongest.  Among  those  divines  w^ho 
were  the  boast  of  the  Universities  and  the  delight  of 
the  capital,  and  who  had  attained,  or  might  reasonably 
expect  to  attain,  opulence  and  lordly  rank,  a  party, 
respectable  in  numbers,  and  more  respectable  in  char- 
acter, leaned  towards  constitutional  principles  of  gov- 
ernment, lived  on  friendly  terms  with  Presbyterians, 
Independents,  and  Baptists,  would  gladly  have  seen  a 
full  toleration  granted  to  all  Protestant  sects,  and  would 
even  have  consented  to  make  alterations  in  the  Liturgy, 
for  the  purpose  of  conciliating  honest  and  candid  Non- 
conformists. But  such  latitudinarianisra  was  held  in 
horror  by  the  country  parson.  He  took,  indeed,  more 
pride  in  his  ragged  gown  than  his  superiors  in  their 
lawn  and  their  scarlet  hoods.  The  very  consciousness 
l!i;it  there  was  little  in  his  worldly  circumstances  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  tiie  villagers  to  whom  he  ])reached 
led  him  to  hold  innnodei'ately  high  the  dignity  of  that 
sacerdotal  office  which  Avas  his  single  title  to  reverence. 
Having  lived  in  seclnsion,  and  liaving  had  little  o[)por- 

1  "  I  have  frequently  heard  him  (Drvilf!!))  own  witli  pleasure,  that  if  ha 
hail  iiiiy  til  lent  for  ILiiglish  prose  it  was  owing  to  iiis  having  often  reiul  th« 
writings  of  the  great  Archbisiiop  Tillotson."  Congreve's  Dedication  of 
Drydeu's  Plays. 


866  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

tunity  of  correcting  lus  opinions  by  reading  or  conver- 
sation, he  held  and  taught  the  doctrines  of  indefeasible 
hereditary  right,  of  passive  obedience,  and  of  nonresist- 
ance  in  all  their  crude  absurdity.  Having  been  long 
engaged  in  a  petty  war  against  the  neighbouring  dis- 
senters, he  too  often  hated  them  for  the  wrongs  which 
he  had  done  them,  and  found  no  fault  with  the  Five 
Mile  Act  and  the  Conventicle  Act,  except  that  those 
odious  laws  had  not  a  sharper  edge.  Whatever  influ- 
ence his  office  gave  him  was  exerted  with  passionate 
zeal  on  the  Tory  side  ;  and  that  influence  was  immense. 
It  would  be  a  si'eat  error  to  imagine,  because  the  coun- 
try  rector  was  in  general  not  regarded  as  a  gentleman, 
because  he  could  not  dare  to  aspire  to  the  hand  of  one 
of  the  young  ladies  at  the  manor  house,  because  he  was 
not  asked  into  the  parlours  of  the  great,  but  was  left 
to  drink  and  smoke  with  grooms  and  butlers,  that  the 
power  of  the  clerical  body  was  smaller  than  at  present. 
The  influence  of  a  class  is  by  no  means  proportioned 
to  the  consideration  which  the  members  of  that  class 
enjoy  in  their  individual  capacity.  A  Cardinal  is  a 
much  more  exalted  personage  than  a  begging  friar  :  but 
it  vi^ould  be  a  grievous  mistake  to  sup})ose  that  the 
College  of  Cardinals  has  exercised  a  greater  dominion 
over  the  public  mind  of  Europe  than  the  Order  of  Saint 
Francis.  In  Ireland,  at  present,  a  peer  holds  a  far 
higher  station  in  society  than  a  Roman  Catholic  priest : 
yet  there  are  in  Munster  and  Comiaught  few  counties 
where  a  combination  of  priests  would  not  carry  an  elec- 
tion against  a  combination  of  peers.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  the  pulpit  was  to  a  large  portion  of  the  popula- 
tion what  the  periodical  press  now  is.  Scarce  any  of 
the  clowns  who  came  to  the  parish  church  ever  saw  a 
Gazette  or  a  political  pamphlet.     Ill  informed  as  their 


Gil.  III.]  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  367 

spiritual  pastor  might  be,  lie  was  yet  better  informed 
than  themselves  :  lie  had  every  week  an  opportunity 
of  harano-uiiifr  them  ;  and  his  haran<>ues  were  never 
answered.  At  every  important  conjuncture,  invectives 
against  the  Whigs  and  exhortations  to  obey  the  Lord's 
anointed  resounded  at  once  from  many  thousands  of 
pulpits  ;  and  the  effect  was  formidable  indeed.  Of  all 
the  causes  which,  after  the  dissolution  of  the  Oxford 
Parliament,  produced  the  violent  reaction  against  the 
Exclusionists,  the  most  potent  seems  to  have  been  the 
oratory  of  the  country  clergy. 

The  power  which  the  country  gentlemen  and  the 
country  clergymen  exercised  in  the  rural  dis-  .^^^^ 
tricts  was  in  some  measure  counterbalanced  3«"'"'"'ry- 
by  the  power  of  the  yeomanry,  an  eminently  manly 
and  truehearted  race.  The  petty  proprietors  who  cul- 
tivated their  own  fields  with  their  own  hands,  and  en- 
joyed a  modest  competence,  without  affecting  to  have 
scutcheons  and  crests,  or  aspiring  to  sit  on  the  bench 
of  justice,  then  formed  a  much  more  important  part 
of  the  nation  than  at  present.  If  we  may  trust  the 
best  statistical  writers  of  that  age,  not  less  than  a  hun- 
dred and  sixty  thousand  proj)rietoi\s,  who  with  their 
families  must  have  made  up  more  than  a  seventh  of 
the  whole  population,  derived  their  subsistence  fi'ora 
little  freehold  estates.  The  average  income  of  these 
small  landholders,  an  income  made  u])  of  rent,  profit, 
and  wages,  was  estimated  at  between  sixty  and  seventy 
])ounds  a  year.  It  was  computed  that  the  number  of 
])ersons  who  tilled  their  own  land  was  greater  than  the 
number  t)i"  those  who  farmed  the  land  of  others.^  A 
large  portion  of  the  yeomanry  had,  fi'om  the  time  of  the 
Reformation,  leaned  towards  Puritanism,  had,   in  the 

^  I  liiivc  lakiii  l);iveii;»iit's  estimate,  wliich  is  n  little  lower  than  King's. 


368  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.III. 

civil  war,  taken  the  side  of"  the  Parhaiuent,  had,  after 
the  Restoration,  persisted  in  liearing  Presbyterian  and 
Independent  preachers,  liad,  at  elections,  strenuously 
supported  the  Exclusionists,  and  had  continued,  even 
after  the  discovery  of  the  Rye  House  plot  and  the  pro- 
scription of  the  Whig  leaders,  to  regard  Popery  and 
ai'bitrary  power  with  unmitigated  hostility. 

Great  as  has  been  the  change  in  the  rural  life  of  Eng- 
^     „    ,      land  since  the  Revolution,  the  chano;e  whicli 

Growth  of  '  S> 

the  towns.  ],.jg  c-ome  to  pass  in  the  cities  is  still  more 
amazing.  At  present  above  a  sixth  part  of  tlie  nation 
is  crowded  into  provincial  towns  of  more  than  thirty 
tliousand  inhabitants.  In  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second  no  provincial  town  in  the  kingdom  contained 
thirty  thousand  inhabitants ;  and  only  four  provin- 
cial towns  contained  so  many  as  ten  thousand  inhab- 
itants. 

Next  to  the  capital,  but  next  at  an  immense  distance, 
stood  Bristol,  then  the  first  English  seaport, 
and  Norwich,  then  the  first  English  manufac- 
turine;  town.  Both  have  since  that  time  been  far  out- 
stripped  by  younger  rivals  ;  yet  both  have  made  great 
positive  advances.  The  population  of  Bristol  has  quad- 
rupled. The  population  of  Norwich  has  more  than 
doubled. 

Pepys,  who  visited  Bristol  eight  years  after  the 
Restoration,  was  struck  by  the  splendour  of  the  city. 
But  his  standard  was  not  high  ;  for  he  noted  down 
as  a  wonder  the  circumstance  that,  in  Bristol,  a  man 
might  look  round  him  and  see  nothing  but  liouses.  It 
seems  that,  in  no  other  place  with  Avhich  he  was  ac- 
quainted, except  London,  did  the  buildings  completely 
shut  out  the  woods  and  fields.  Large  as  Bristol  might 
tlien  appear,  it  occupied  but  a  very  small  portion  of  the 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  309 

area  on  wliicli  it  now  stands.  A  few  churches  of  emi- 
nent beauty  I'ose  out  of  a  labyrinth  of  narrow  lanes 
built  u})on  vaults  v{'  no  ^reat  solidity.  If  a  coach  or  a 
cart  entered  those  alleys,  there  was  danfjerthat  it  would 
be  wediied  between  the  houses,  and  dano;er  also  that  it 
Avould  break  in  the  cellars.  Goods  were  therefore  con- 
veyed about  the  town  almost  exclusively  in  trucks 
drawn  by  dogs ;  and  the  richest  iidiabitants  exhibited 
their  wealth,  not  by  riding  in  gilded  carriages,  but  by 
walking  the  streets  with  trains  of  servants  in  rich 
liveries,  and  by  keeping  tables  loaded  with  good  cheer. 
The  pomp  of  the  christenings  and  burials  far  exceeded 
what  was  seen  at  any  other  place  in  England.  The 
hospitality  of  the  city  was  widely  renowned,  and  es- 
pecially the  collations  with  which  the  sugar  I'cfiners 
regaled  their  visitors.  The  repast  was  dressed  in  the 
furnace,  and  was  accompanied  by  a  rich  beverage  mafle 
of  the  best  Spanish  wine,  and  celebrated  over  the  whole 
kingdom  as  Bristol  milk.  This  luxury  was  supported 
by  a  thriving  trade  with  the  North  American  planta- 
tions and  with  the  West  Indies.  The  passion  for  colo- 
nial traffic  was  so  strong  that  there  was  scarce  a  small 
shopkeej)er  in  Bristol  who  had  not  a  venture  on  board 
of  some  ship  bound  for  Virginia  or  the  Antilles.  Some 
of  these  ventures  indeed  were  not  of  the  most  honour- 
able kind.  There  was,  in  the  Transatlantic  possessions 
of  the  crown,  a  great  demand  for  labour  ;  and  this 
demand  was  partly  sujiplied  by  a  system  of  crimping 
and  kidnapping  at  the  principal  English  seaports.  No- 
where was  this  system  found  in  such  active  and  exten- 
sive o])eration  as  at  Bristol.  Even  the  first  magistrates 
of  that  city  were  not  ashamed  to  ein-ich  themselves  by 
,so  odious  a  commerce.  The  number  of  houses  appears, 
from  the  returns  of  the  hearth  money,  to  have  been,  in 
vol..  I.  24 


370  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  lU. 

the  year  1G85,  just  five  thousand  three  hundred.  We 
can  hardly  suppose  the  iiumher  of  pei'sons  in  a  house  to 
have  been  greater  than  in  tlie  City  of  London  ;  and  in 
the  City  of  London  we  learn  from  the  best  authority 
that  there  were  then  fifty-five  persons  to  ten  houses. 
The  population  of  Bristol  must  therefore  have  been 
about  twenty- nine  thousand  souls.^ 

Norwich  was  the  capital  of  a  large  and  fruitful  prov- 
ince.    It  was  the  residence  of  a  Bishop  and 

Norwich.  pi  t  i  i  •    p  i>      i 

of  a  chapter.  It  was  the  chief  seat  of  tlie 
chief  manufacture  of  the  realm.  Some  men  distin- 
guished by  learning  and  science  had  recently  dwelt 
there  ;  and  no  place  in  the  kingdom,  except  the  capital 
and  the  Universities,  had  more  attractions  for  the  curi- 
ous. The  library,  the  musevun,  the  aviary,  and  the 
botanical  garden  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  were  thought 
by  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society  well  worthy  of  a  long 
pilgrimage.  Norwich  had  also  a  court  in  miniature. 
In  the  heart  of  the  city  stood  an  old  palace  of  the  Dukes 
of  Norfolk,  said  to  be  the  largest  town  house  in  the 
kingdom  out  of  London.  In  this  mansion,  to  which  were 
annexed  a  tennis  court,  a  bowling  green,  and  a  wilder- 
ness, stretching  along  the  banks  of  the  Wansum,  the 
noble  family  of  Howard  frequently  resided,  and  kept  a 
state  resembling  that  of  petty  sovereigns.  Drink  was 
served  to  guests  in  goblets  of  pure  gold.     The  very 

1  Eveljm's  Diary,  June  27.  1654;  Pepys's  Diary,  June  13.  1668;  Roger 
North's  Lives  of  Lord  Keeper  Guildford,  and  of  Sir  Dudley  North;  Petty's 
Political  Arithmetic.  I  have  taken  Petty's  facts,  but,  in  drawing  infer- 
ences from  tliem,  I  have  been  guided  by  King  iind  Davenaiit,  who,  though 
not  abler  men  than  he,  liad  the  advantage  of  coming  after  him.  As  to 
the  kidnapping  for  which  Bristol  was  infamous,  see  North's  Life  of  Guild- 
ford, 121.  216.,  and  the  liarangue  of  JetiVeys  on  the  subject,  in  the  Impar- 
tial History  of  his  Life  and  Death,  printed  with  the  Bloody  Assizes.  Hia 
stjde  was,  as  usual,  coarse;  but  I  cannot  reckon  tlie  rcjirinnud  which  he 
gave  to  the  magistrates  of  Bristol  among  his  crimes. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  371 

toners  and  shovels  were  of  silver.  Pictures  by  Italian 
masters  adorned  the  walls.  The  cabinets  were  filled 
with  a  fine  collection  of  gems  purchased  by  that  Earl 
of  Annidel  whose  marbles  are  now  among  the  orna- 
ments of  Oxford.  Here,  in  the  year  1071,  Chai'les 
and  his  court  were  smnptnously  entertained.  Here, 
too,  all  comers  were  annually  welcomed,  from  Christ- 
mas to  Twelfth  Nioht.  Ale  flowed  in  oceans  for  the 
populace.  Three  coaches,  one  of  which  had  been  built 
at  a  cost  of  five  hundred  pounds  to  contain  fourteen 
persons,  were  sent  every  afternoon  round  the  city  to 
bring  ladies  to  the  festivities  ;  and  the  dances  were 
always  followed  by  a  luxurious  banquet.  When  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk  came  to  Norwich,  he  was  greeted 
like  a  King  returning  to  his  capital.  The  bells  of  the 
(yathedral  and  of  Saint  Peter  Mancroft  were  rune: : 
the  guns  of  the  Castle  were  fired ;  and  the  Mayor  and 
Aldermen  waited  on  their  illustrious  fellow  citizen  with 
complimentary  addresses.  In  the  year  1693  the  popu- 
lation of  Norwich  was  found,  by  actual  enumeration, 
to  be  between  twenty-eight  and  twenty-nine  thousand 
souls. ^ 

Far  below  Norwich,  but  still  hiiih  in  dio-nity  and 
imj)ortance,  were  some  other  ancient  capitals  of  shires, 
lu  that  age  it  was  seldom  that  a  country  gentleman 
went  up  with  his  family  to  London.  The  county  town 
was  his  metro])olis.  He  sometimes  made  it  his  resi- 
dence during  ])art  of  the  year.  At  all  events,  he  was 
often  attracted  thither  by  business  and  pleasure,  by  as- 
sizes, quarter  sessions,  elections,  musters  of  militia,  fes- 
tivals,  and  races.     There  were   the  halls  where   the 

1  rullci's  Wortliies:  I'.velyn's  Div.!"-,  Oct.  17. 1671 ;  .Touriial  of  K.  Rrowne. 
•on  of  Sir  flioiiias  Biowr.c,  Jan.  1605;  Bloniefield's  History  of  Norfolk- 
History  of  the  Cily  ami  County  of  Norwich,  2  vols.  1708. 


372  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  lU 

judges,  robed  in  scarlet  and  escorted  by  javelins  and 
trumpets,  opened  tlie  King's  commission  twice  a  year. 
Tliere  were  the  markets  at  which  the  corn,  the  cattle, 
the  wool,  and  the  hops  of  the  surrounding  country  were 
exposed  to  sale.  There  were  the  great  fairs  to  wliicli 
merchants  came  down  from  London,  and  where  the 
rural  dealer  laid  in  his  annual  stores  of  suo;ar,  station- 
cry,  cutlery,  and  muslin.  There  were  the  shops  at 
which  the  best  families  of  the  neighbourhood  bought 
grocery  and  millinery.  Some  of  these  places  derived 
dignity  from  interesting  historical  recollections,  from 
cathedrals  decorated  by  all  the  art  and  magnificence 
of  the  middle  ages,  from  palaces  where  a  long  succes- 
sion of  prelates  had  dwelt,  from  closes  surrounded  by 
the  venerable  abodes  of  deans  and  canons,  and  from 
castles  which  had  in  the  old  time  repelled  the  Nevilles 
or  De  Veres,  and  which  bore  more  recent  traces  of  the 
vengeance  of  Rupert  or  of  Cromwell. 

Conspicuous  amongst  these  interesting  cities  were 
other  coun-  York,  the  capital  of  the  north,  and  Exeter, 
try  towns.  ^|jg  capital  of  the  west.  Neither  can  have 
contained  much  more  than  ten  thousand  inhabitants. 
Worcester,  the  queen  of  the  cider  land,  had  about  eight 
thousand  ;  Nottingham  probably  as  many.  Glouces- 
ter, renowned  for  that  resolute  defence  which  had 
been  fatal  to  Charles  the  First,  had  certainly  between 
four  and  five  thousand  ;  Derby  not  quite  four  thou- 
sand. Shrewsbury  was  the  chief  place  of  an  exten- 
sive and  fertile  district.  The  court  of  the  marches 
of  Wales  was  held  there.  In  the  language  of  the  gen- 
try many  miles  round  the  Wrekin,  to  go  to  Shrews- 
bury was  to  go  to  town.  The  provincial  wits  and 
beauties  imitated,  as  well  as  they  could,  the  fashions 
of  Saint  James's   Park,   in   the  walks  along  the  side 


Ch.   III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN    1G85.  373 

of  the  Severn.  The  inhabitants  were  about  seven 
tliousand.i 

The  population  of  every  one  of  these  ])laces  lias, 
since  the  Revolution,  much  more  than  doubled.  The 
population  of  some  has  multij)Iied  sevenfold.  The 
streets  have  been  almost  entirely  rebuilt.  Slate  has 
succeeded  to  thatch,  and  brick  to  timber.  The  pave- 
ments and  the  lamps,  the  display  of  wealth  in  the 
jn-incipal  shops,  and  the  luxurious  neatness  of  the 
dwellings  occupied  by  the  gentry  would,  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  have  seemed  miraculous.  Yet  is  the 
relative  importance  of  the  old  capitals  of  counties  by 
no  means  what  it  was.  Younger  towns,  towns  which 
are  rarely  or  never  mentioned  in  our  early  history  and 
which  sent  no  representatives  to  our  earlv  Parlia- 
ments,  have,  Avithin  the  memory  of  persons  still  living, 
grown  to  a  greatness  which  this  generation  contem- 
plates with  wonder  and  pride,  not  unaccompanied  by 
awe  and  anxiety. 

The  most  eminent  of  these  towns  were  indeed 
known    in    the    seventeenth   century    as    re- 

II  n   •      ^  -ikT  -I      •  .  V      Manchester. 

spectable  seats  ot  industry.     Nay,  their  rapid 
progress  and  their  vast  opulence  were  then  sometimes 

1  Tlie  popiilutiou  of  York  :ipp(!;irs,  from  the  return  of  baptisms  and  burials, 
in  Drake's  History,  to  have  been  about  V-ifiOO  in  1730.  Kxeter  had  only 
17,000  inlial)it«nts  in  1801.  The  population  of  Worcester  was  numbered 
just  belbie  the  siege  in  104G.  See  Nash's  History  of  Worce.stershire.  I 
have  made  allowance  for  the  iiicreiuse  which  must  be  supposed  to  have  taken 
place  in  forty  rears.  In  1740,  the  population  of  Nottingham  was  found, 
by  eunmeration,  to  bejust  10.000.  See  l)uriny:'s  History.  The  population 
of  Gloucester  may  readily  be  inferred  from  the  number  of  houses  which 
Kiuf;  found  in  the  returns  of  hearth  money,  and  from  the  number  of  birth.s 
and  burials  which  is  given  in  Atkyns's  History.  The  population  of  Derby 
was  4000  in  1712  See  Wolley's  MS.  History,  quoted  in  Lyson's  Ma-na  • 
Hiitannia.  The  population  of  Shrewsbury  was  ascertained,  in  1G!»5.  by 
actual  enumeration.  As  to  the  gaieties  of  Shrewsbury,  .see  Farquhar's  Ke- 
cruitiuj;  Oflicor.  Farquhar's  description  is  borne  out  by  a  ballad  in  th« 
I'epysian  Library,  of  which  the  burden  is  "  Shrewsbury  for  me." 


374  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAXD.  [Cii.  III. 

described  in  lauuuao;e  wliicli  seems  ludicrous  to  a  man 
who  has  seen  their  })resent  grandeur.  One  of  the  most 
populous  and  prosperous  among  them  was  Manchester. 
It  had  been  recpured  by  the  Pi'otector  to  send  one  rep- 
resentative to  his  Parliament,  and  was  mentioned  by 
writers  of  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second  as  a  busy 
and  opulent  j^lace.  Cotton  had,  during  half  a  century, 
been  brought  thither  from  Cyprus  and  Smyrna ;  but 
the  manufacture  %vas  in  its  infancy.  Whitney  had  not 
yet  taught  how  the  raw  material  might  be  furnished  in 
quantities  almost  fabulous.  Arkwright  had  not  yet 
taught  how  it  might  be  worked  up  with  a  speed  and 
precision  which  seem  magical.  The  whole  annual  im- 
port did  not,  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
amount  to  two  millions  of  pounds,  a  quantity  which 
would  now  hardly  supply  the  demand  of  forty-eight 
hours.  That  wonderful  emporium,  which  in  popula- 
tion and  Avealth  far  surpasses  capitals  so  much  re- 
nowned as  Berlin,  Madrid,  and  Lisbon,  was  then  a 
mean  and  ill  built  market  town,  containing  under  six 
thousand  people.  It  then  had  not  a  single  press.  It 
now  suj^ports  a  hundred  ]irinting  establishments.  It 
then  had  not  a  single  coach.  It  now  supports  twenty 
coachmakers.^ 

Leeds   was   already   the   chief  seat   of  the  woollen 
manufactures  of  Yorkshire  :  but  the  elderly 

Leeds.  ,  ^  ,     " 

inhabitants  could  still  remember  the  time 
when  the  first  brick  house,  then  and  long  after  called 
the  Red  House,  was  built.     They  boasted  loudly  of 

1  Blonie's  Britannia,  1673;  Aikin's  Country  round  Manchester;  Man- 
chester Diree-tory,  1845;  Raines,  History  of  the  Cotton  Manufiicture.  The 
Jest  information  wliicli  I  have  been  able  to  find,  touching  the  population  of 
Manchester  in  the  seventeenth  century,  is  contained  in  a  paper  drawn  up 
by  the  Reverend  R.  Parkinson,  and  published  in  the  .Journal  of  the  Statis 
tical  Society  for  October,  1842. 


Ch.  111.]  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  375 

tlieir  increasing  wealth,  and  of"  the  immense  sales  of 
cloth  which  took  phice  in  the  open  air  on  the  bridge. 
Hundreds,  nay  thousands  of  pounds,  had  been  paid 
down  in  the  course  of  one  busy  market  day.  The 
rising  importance  of  Leeds  had  attracted  tlie  notice  of 
successive  governments.  Charles  the  First  had  granted 
municipal  privileges  to  the  town.  Oliver  had  invited 
it  to  send  one  member  to  the  House  of  Commons.  But 
from  the  returns  of  the  hearth  money  it  seems  certain 
that  the  whole  population  of  the  borough,  an  extensive 
district  which  contains  many  hamlets,  did  not,  in  the 
reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  exceed  seven  thousand 
souls.  In  1841  there  were  more  than  a  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand.^ 

About  a  day's  journey  south  of  Leeds,  on  the  veige 
of  a  wild  moorland  tract,  lay  an  ancient 
manor,  now  rich  with  cultivation,  then  bar- 
ren and  uuinclosed,  which  was  known  by  the  name  of 
Hallamshire.  L'on  abounded  there  ;  and,  from  a  very 
early  period,  the  rude  whittles  fabricated  there  had 
been  sold  all  over  the  kingdom.  They  had  indeed 
been  mentioned  by  Geoffrey  Chaucer  in  one  of  his  Can- 
terbury Tales.  But  the  manufacture  appears  to  have 
made  little  progress  during  the  three  centuries  which 
followed  his  time.  This  languor  niay  perhaps  be  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  the  trade  was,  during  almost 
the  whole  of  tliis  long  period,  subject  to  such  regula- 
tions as  the  lord  and  his  court  leet  thouglit  fit  to  im- 
pose. The  more  delicate  kinds  of  cutlery  were  either 
made  in  the  capital,  or  brought  from  the  Continent.  It 
was  not  indeed  till  the  reign  of  George  the  First  that 
the    English   surgeons   ceased   to   imijort  from  France 


1  'I'hiiresliv's  Ducatus  T.eodcnsis;  Wliitaker's  Loidis  and  EIniete;  War- 
dell's  Jlimicipiil  History  of  till-  Horoiigli  of  Leeds. 


376  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

those  exquisitely  fine  blades  which  are  reqviired  for 
operations  on  the  human  frame.  Most  of  the  Hal- 
lamshire  forges  were  collected  in  a  market  town  which 
had  sprung  up  near  the  castle  of  the  proprietor,  and 
^^-hich,  in  the  reign  of  Jannes  the  First,  had  been  a  sin- 
o-ularly  miserable  place,  containing  about  two  thousand 
inhabitants,  of  whom  a  third  were  half  starved  and 
half  naked  beggars.  It  seems  certain  from  the  paro- 
chial registers  that  the  population  did  not  amount  to 
four  thousand  at  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second.  The  effects  of  a  species  of  toil  singularly 
unfavourable  to  the  health  and  vigour  of  the  human 
frame  were  at  once  discerned  by  every  traveller.  A 
large  proportion  of  the  people  had  distorted  limbs. 
This  is  that  Sheffield  which  now,  with  its  dependen- 
cies, contains  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  souls, 
and  which  sends  forth  its  admirable  knives,  razors,  and 
lancets  to  the  farthest  ends  of  the  world.^ 

Birminoham  had  not  been  thought  of  sufficient  im- 
portance  to  return  a  member  to  Oliver's  Par- 
liament.   Yet  the  manufacturers  of  Birming- 
ham were   already   a  busy  and  thriving  race.     They 
boasted  that  their  hardware  was  highly  esttjemed,  not 
indeed  as  now,  at  Pekin  and  Lima,  at  Bokhara  and 
Timbuctoo,  but  in  London,  and  even  as  far  off  as  L'e- 
land.     They  had  acquired  a  less  honourable  renown  as 
coiners  of  bad  money.     In  allusion  to  their  spurious 
groats,  some  Tory  wit  had  fixed  on  demagogues,  who 
hypocritically  affected  zeal  against  Popery,  the   nick- 
name' of  Bii-minghams.     Yet  in  1685  the  population, 
Avhich  is  now  httle   less  than  two  hundred  thousand, 
did  not  amovmt  to  four  thousand.    Birmingham  buttons 
were  just  beginning  to   be   known  :    of  Birmingham 

1  Hunter's  History  of  Hallamshire. 


Ch.  hi.]  state   of   ENGLAND   IN    1G85.  377 

guns  nobody  had  yet  heard;  and  the  place  whence, 
two  generations  later,  the  magnificent  editions  of  Bas- 
kerville  went  forth  to  astonish  all  the  librarians  of  Eu- 
rope, did  not  contain  a  single  regular  shop  where  a 
Bible  or  an  almanack  could  be  bouoht.  On  market 
days  a  bookseller  named  Michael  Johnson,  the  father 
of  the  great  Samuel  Johnson,  came  over  from  Lichfield, 
and  opened  a  stall  during  a  few  hours.  This  supply 
of  literature  was  long  found  adequate  to  the  demand.^ 
These  four  chief  seats  of  our  great  manufactures 
deserve  especial  mention.  It  would  be  tedious  to  enu- 
merate all  the  po])ulous  and  opulent  hives  of  industry 
which,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  were  hamlets 
without  a  parish  church,  or  desolate  moors,  inhabited 
only  by  grouse  and  wild  deer.  Nor  has  the  change 
been  less  signal  in  those  outlets  by  which  the  products 
of  the  English  looms  and  forges  are  poured  forth  over 
the  whole  world.     At  present  Liverpool  con- 

1  Till  1  Liverpool. 

tarns  about  three  hundred  thousand  inhabi- 
tants. The  shipping  registered  at  her  j)ort  amounts  to 
between  four  and  five  huiulred  tliousand  tons.  Into 
her  custom  house  has  been  repeatedly  paid  in  one  year 
a  sum  more  than  thrice  as  great  as  the  whole  income 
of  the  English  crown  in  1685.  The  receipts  of  her 
post  office,  even  since  the  great  reduction  of  the  duty, 
exceed  the  sum  which  the  postage  of  the  whole  king- 
dom yielded  to  tlie  Duke  of  York.  Her  endless  docks, 
quays  and  warehouses  are  among  the  wonders  of  the 

1  IJlonic's  I5ritniiiii;i,  ir,7;i:  Diiplalc's  ■Wanvicksliire;  Nortli's  Exainen, 
321.;  PruCacc  to  Ahsaloin  ami  Ailiitopliel ;  lliitton's  History  of  Hiiiiiing- 
ham;  Boswell's  LitV  (.f  .!o!inson.  In  1090  the  burials  at  Binniii^liain  were 
150,  the  baptisms  12.").  I  think  it  prohal)le  that  the  aTiiiinil  moilality  was 
little  less  than  (Hic  in  twcMity-live.  In  I.i  ndon  it  \vas  ((iii.Nidurablv  {jrcatiT. 
A  histcrian  of  Xottinsliam,  half  a  century  later,  boasted  of  the  extvanrdi- 
nary  salubrity  of  his  town,  wlicre  the  annual  mortality  was  one  in  thirty 
See  Dering's  Histor}'  of  Nottingham. 


378  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

world.  Yet  even  tliose  clocks  and  quays  and  ware- 
houses seem  hardly  to  suffice  for  the  gigantic  trade  of 
the  Mersey  ;  and  already  a  rival  city  is  growing  fast 
on  the  opposite  shore.  In  the  days  of  Charles  the 
Second  Liverpool  was  described  as  a  rising  town  which 
had  recently  made  great  advances,  and  which  main- 
tained a  profitable  intercourse  with  Ireland  and  with 
the  suo-ar  colonies.  The  customs  had  multiplied  eight- 
fold  within  sixteen  years,  and  amounted  to  what  was 
then  considered  as  the  immense  sum  of  fifteen  thou- 
sand pounds  annually.  But  the  population  can  hardly 
have  exceeded  four  thousand  :  the  shipping  was  about 
fourteen  hundred  tons,  less  than  the  tonnage  of  a  sin- 
gle modern  Indiaman  of  the  first  class  ;  and  the  whole 
number  of  seamen  belonging  to  the  port  cannot  be 
estimated  at  more  than  two  hundred.* 

Such  has  been  the  progress  of  those  towns  where 
wealth  is  created  and  accumulated.  Not  less  rapid  has 
waterin  ^^^^^  *^®  progTcss  of  towus  of  a  vcry  different 
places.  kind,  towns  in  which  wealth,  created  and  ac- 

cumulated elsewhere,  is  expended  for  purposes  of  health 
and  recreation.  Some  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these 
<Tay  places  have  sprung  into  existence  since  the  time.ot 
the  Stuarts.  Cheltenham  is  now  a  greater 
Cheltenham.   ^.^_^  ^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^^.^j^  ^j^^  kingdom  Contained  in 

the  seventeenth  century,  London  alone  excepted.  But 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the 
eio-hteenth,  Cheltenham  was  mentioned  by  local  his- 
torians  merely  as  a  rural  jiarish  lying  under  the  Cots- 
wold  Hills,  and  affording  good  ground,  both  for  tillage 

1  Blome's  Britannia;  Gregson's  Antiquities  of  the  County  Palatine  and 
.    Duchy  of  Lancaster,  Part  II. ;  Petition  from  Liverpool  in  the   Privy  Coun- 
cil Book,  May  10.  1G86.     In   1690  the   burials  at  Liverpool  were  151,  the 
baptisms  120.     In   1844  the  net  receipt  of  the  customs  at  Liverpool  was 
l,;i65,526;.  Is.  8d 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  379 

and  pasture.  Corn  grew  and  cattle  browsed  over  the 
space  now  covered  by  that  long  succession  of  streets 
and  villas. 1      Brijihton   was    described    as  a    „  .  , 

'^  ...  Bnghton. 

place  which  had  once  been  thriving,  which 
had  possessed  many  small  fishing  barks,  and  which 
had,  when  at  the  height  of  prosperity,  contained  above 
two  thousand  inhabitants,  but  which  was  sinking  fast 
into  decay.  The  sea  was  gradually  gaining  on  the 
buildings,  which  at  length  almost  entirely  disappeared. 
Ninety  years  ago  the  ruins  of  an  old  fort  were  to  be  seen 
lying  among  the  pebbles  and  seaweed  on  the  beach  ;  and 
ancient  men  could  still  point,  out  the  traces  of  founda- 
tions on  a  spot  where  a  street  of  more  than  a  hundred 
huts  had  been  swallowed  up  by  the  waves.  So  deso- 
late was  the  place  after  this  calamity,  that  the  vicarage 
was  thought  scarcely  worth  having.  A  few  poor  fisher- 
men, however,  still  continued  to  dry  their  nets  on  those 
cliffs,  on  which  now  a  town,  more  than  twice  as  large 
and  populous  as  the  Bristol  of  the  Stuarts,  presents, 
mile  after  mile,  its  gay  and  fantastic  front  to  the  sea.^ 
England,  however,  was  not,  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tmy,  destitute  of  watering  places.  The  gentry  of  Der- 
byshire and  of  the  neighbouring  counties  re- 
])alred  to  Buxton,  where  thev  were  lo(l<Ted  in 
low  rooms  under  bare  rafters,  and  regaled  with  oatcake, 
and  with  a  viand  which  the  hosts  called  nuitton,  but 
which  the  guests  strongly  suspected  to  be  doo-.3  ^^  ^j,,_ 
gle  good  house  stood  near  the  spring.  Tunbridge 
Wells,  lying  within  a  day's  journey  of  the  Tunbri.iK.- 
cajjital,  and  in  one  of  the  richest  and  most  ^^*"*' 
highly  civilised  ])arts  of  the  Idngdom,  had  much  greater 
attractions.      At  present  we  see  there  a  town  which 

1  Alkyiis's  Gloiuestershire. 

2  Manila  Biitainiia;  Grose's  Aiitiiiuities;  New   Biightlielmstone  Diroc- 
tory,  1770. 

8  Tour  ill  Dtrliysliire,  by  Thomas  Browne,  son  of  Sir  Thomas. 


380  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cn.  III. 

would,  a  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago,  have  ranked,  in 
population,  fourth  or  fifth  among  the  towns  of  England. 
The  brilliancy  of  the  shops  and  the  luxury  of  the  private 
dwellings  far  surpasses  anything  that  England  could 
then  show.  When  the  court,  soon  after  the  Restora- 
tion, visited  Tun  bridge  Wells,  there  was  no  town  :  but, 
within  a  mile  of  the  spring,  rustic  cottages,  somewhat 
cleaner  and  neater  than  the  ordinary  cottages  of  that 
time,  were  scattered  over  the  heath.  Some  of  these 
cabins  were  moveable,  and  Avere  carried  on  sledges 
from  one  part  of  the  common  to  another.  To  these 
huts  men  of  fashion,  wearied  with  the  din  and  smoke 
of  London,  sometimes  came  in  the  summer  to  breathe 
fresh  air,  and  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  rural  life.  During 
the  season  a  kind  of  fair  was  daily  held  near  the  foun- 
tain. The  wives  and  daufihters  of  the  Kentish  farmers 
came  from  the  neighbouring  villages  with  cream,  cher- 
ries, wheatears,  and  quails.  To  chaffer  with  them,  to 
flirt  with  them,  to  praise  their  straw  hats  and  tight 
heels,  was  a  refreshing  pastime  to  voluptuaries  sick  of 
the  airs  of  actresses  and  maids  of  honour.  Milliners, 
toymen,  and  jewellers  came  down  from  London,  and 
opened  a  bazaar  under  the  trees.  In  one  booth  the 
politician  might  find  his  coffee  and  the  London  Ga- 
zette ;  in  another  were  gamblers  playing  deep  at  bas- 
set ;  and,  on  fine  evenings,  the  fiddles  were  in  attend- 
ance, and  there  were  morris  dances  on  the  elastic  turf 
of  the  bowling  green.  In  1685  a  subscription  had 
just  been  raised  among  tliose  who  frequented  the 
wells  for  building  a  church,  which  the  Tories,  who 
then  domineered  everywhere,  insisted  on  dedicating 
to  Saint  Charles  the  Martyr.^ 

1  M^moires  de  Granimont;  Hasted's  Historj' of  Kent;  Tunbridge  Wells, 
a  Corned}',  1678;  Causton's  Tunbridgialia,  1G88;  Metellus,  a  poem  on  Tun- 
bridge  Wells,  1693. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  381 

But  at  the  head  of  the  English  watering  places,  with- 
out a  rival,  was  Bath.  The  springs  of  that 
city  had  been  I'enowned  from  the  days  of  the 
Romans.  It  had  been,  during  many  centuries,  the 
seat  of  a  Bishop.  The  sick  repaired  tliither  from  eveiy 
part  of  the  reahn.  The  King  sometimes  held  his  court 
there.  Nevertheless,  Bath  was  then  a  maze  of  only 
four  )r  five  hundred  houses,  crowded  within  an  old 
wall  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Avon.  Pictures  of  what 
were  considered  as  the  finest  of  those  houses  are  still 
extant,  and  greatly  resemble  the  lowest  rag  shops  and 
potliouses  of  Radcliffe  Highway.  Travellers,  indeed, 
complained  loudly  of  the  narrowness  and  meanness  of 
the  streets.  Tliat  beautiful  city  which  charms  even 
eyes  familiar  with  the  masterpieces  of  Bramante  and 
Palladio,  and  which  the  genius  of  Anstey  and  of  Smol- 
lett, of  Frances  Burney  and  of  Jane  Austen,  has  made 
classic  ground,  had  not  begun  to  exist.  Milsom  Street 
itself  was  an  open  field  lying  far  beyond  the  walls  ;  and 
hedgerows  intersected  the  space  which  is  now  covered 
by  the  Crescent  and  the  Circus.  The  poor  patients  to 
whom  the  waters  had  been  recommended  lay  on  straw 
in  a  place  which,  to  use  the  language  of  a  contemporary 
physician,  was  a  covert  rather  than  a  lodging.  As  to 
the  comforts  and  luxuries  which  were  to  be  found  in 
the  interior  of  the  houses  of  Bath  by  the  fashionable 
visitors  who  resorted  thither  in  search  of  health  or 
amusement,  we  possess  information  more  com])lete  and 
minute  than  can  generally  be  obtained  on  such  subjects. 
A  writer  who  ))ublished  an  account  of  that  city  about 
sixty  years  after  the  Revolution  has  accurately  de- 
scribed the  changes  which  had  taken  place  within  his 
own  recollection.  He  assures  us  that  in  his  younger 
days  the  gentlemen  who  visited   the   springs   slept  in 


882  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cw.  III. 

rooms  hardly  as  good  as  tlie  garrets  which  he  hved  to 
see  occupied  by  footmen.  Th.e  floors  of  the  dining 
rooms  were  uncarpeted,  and  were  coloured  brown  with 
a  wash  made  of  soot  and  small  beer,  in  order  to  hide 
the  dirt.  Not  a  wainscot  was  painted.  Not  a  hearth 
or  a  chimneypiece  was  of  marble.  A  slab  of  common 
freestone  and  fire  irons  which  had  cost  from  three  to 
four  shillings  Avere  thought  sufficient  for  any  fireplace. 
The  best  apartments  were  hung  w^ith  coarse  Avoollen 
stuff,  and  were  furnished  with  rushbottomed  cliairs. 
Readers  who  take  an  interest  in  the  progress  of  civili- 
sation and  of  the  useful  arts  will  be  o-rateful  to  the 
humble  topographer  who  has  recorded  these  facts,  and 
Avill  perhaps  wish  that  historians  of  far  higher  preten- 
sions had  sometimes  spared  a  few  pages  from  military 
evolutions  and  political  intrigues,  for  the  purpose  of 
letting  us  know  how  the  parlours  and  bedchambers 
of  our  ancestors  looked.^ 

The  position  of  London,  relatively  to  the  other  towns 
of  the  em])ire,  was,  in  the  time  of  Charles  the 

London.  .  . 

Second,  far  higher  than  at  present.  For  at 
present  the  population  of  London  is  little  more  than 
six  times  the  population  of  Manchester  or  of  Liverpool. 
In  the  days  of  Charles  the  Second  the  population  of 
London  was  more  than  seventeen  times  the  population 
of  Bristol  or  of  Norwich.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  other  instance  can  be  mentioned  of  a  great  king- 
dom in  which  the  first  city  was  more  than  seventeen 
times  as  laro-e  as  the  second.     There  is  reason  to  be- 


» 


1  See  Wood's  Histor3'  of  Bath,  1749;  Evelyn's  Diaiy,  June  27.1654; 
Pepys's  Diary,  June  12.  1GC8;  Stukeley's  Itinenirum  Curiosum;  Collin- 
' son's  Somersetshire;  Dr.  Peirce's  Historj- and  Memoirs  of  the  Bath,  171-3, 
book  I.  chap.  viii.  ohs.  2.  1084.  I  have  consulted  several  old  maps  and 
pictures  of  Bath,  particularly  one  curious  map  which  is  surrounded  ':~ 
views  of  the  principal  buildings.     It  bears  the  date  of  1717. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  383 

lieve  that,  in  1685,  London  had  been,  during  about 
half  a  century,  the  most  populous  capital  in  Europe. 
The  inhabitants,  who  are  now  at  least  nineteen  hun- 
dred thousand,  were  then  probably  little  more  than  halt" 
a  million.^  London  had  in  the  world  only  one  com- 
niercial  rival,  now  long-  ago  outstripped,  the  mighty  and 
opulent  Amsterdam.  Euglish  writers  boasted  of"  the  for- 
est of  masts  and  yardarms  which  covered  the  river  from 
ilie  Bridge  to  the  Tower,  and  of  the  stupendous  sums 
which  were  collected  at  the  Custom  House  in  Thames 
Street.  There  is,  indeed,  no  doubt  that  the  trade  of 
the  metropolis  then  bore  a  far  grenter  ])ro})ortion  than 
at  present  to  the  whole  trade  of  the  country  ;  yet  to 
our  generation  the  honest  vauntinoj  of  our  ancestors 
must  appear  almost  ludicrous.  The  shij)ping  which 
they  thought  incredibly  great  appears  not  to  have  ex- 
ceeded seventy  thousand  tons.  This  was,  indeed,  then 
more  than  a  third  of  the  whole  tonnage  of  the  kingdom, 
but  is  now  less  than  a  fcmrth  of  the  tonnage  of  New- 
castle, and  is  nearly  equalled  by  the  tonnage  of  the 
steam  vessels  of  the  Thames.  The  customs  of  Lon- 
don amounted,  in  1685,  to  about  three  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Li  our  time  the  net 
duty  paid  annually,  at  the  same  })lace,  exceeds  ten 
millions. 2 

Whoever  examines  the  maps  of  London  which  were 
liul)lished  towards  the  close  of  the  reiirn  of  Charles  the 
Second  will  see  that  only  the  nucleus  of  the  present 
ca|)ital  then  existed.  'IMie  town  did  not,  as  now,  fade 
by  imperceptible  degrees  into  the  country.     No  long 

1  According,'  to  KitiR,  530,000. 

2  MrtcpluTson's  History  of  Commerce;  Chalmers's  Estimate;  Ciiaml)er- 
lavne's  State  of  Kii^'laiifl,  1684.  The  tonnaf;e  of  the  steamers  helorifring 
to  the  port  of  London  was,  at  the  end  of  1847,  about  G0,()00  tons.  The 
customs  of  the  port,  from  1842  to  1845,  very  nearly  averaged  11,000,000/. 


38'1  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  ID. 

avenues  of  villas,  embowei'ed  in  lilacs  and  laburnums, 
extended  from  the  great  centre  of  wealth  and  civilisa- 
tion almost  to  the  Loundaines  of  Middlesex  and  far 
into  the  heart  of  Kent  and  Surrey.  In  the  east,  no 
part  of  the  immense  line  of  v^'arehouses  and  artificial 
lakes  which  now  stretches  from  the  Towner  to  Blackwa!! 
had  even  been  projected.  On  the  west,  scarcely  one 
oi'  those  stately  piles  of  building  which  are  inhabited 
by  the  noble  and  wealtliy  was  in  existence  ;  and  Chel- 
sea, wdiich  is  now  peopled  by  more  than  forty  thousand 
hmuan  beings,  was  a  quiet  country  village  with  about 
a  thousand  inhabitants.^  On  the  north,  cattle  fed,  and 
sportsmen  wandered  with  dogs  and  guns,  over  the  site 
of  the  borough  of  Marylebone,  and  over  far  the  greater 
part  of  the  space  now  covered  by  the  boroughs  of 
Finsbury  and  of  the  Tower  Hamlets.  Islington  was 
almost  a  solitude ;  and  poets  loved  to  contrast  its  silence 
and  repose  with  the  din  and  turmoil  of  the  monster 
London.^  On  the  south  the  capital  is  now  connected 
with  its  suburb  by  several  bridges,  not  inferior  in  mag- 
nificence and  solidity  to  the  noblest  works  of  the  Caesars. 
In  1685,  a  single  line  of  irregular  arches,  overhung  by 
piles  of  mean  and  crazy  houses,  and  gai'nished,  after  a 
fashion  worthy  of  the  naked  barbarians  of  Dahomy, 
with  scores  of  mouldering  heads,  impeded  the  naviga- 
tion of  the  river. 

Of  the  metropolis,  the  City,  properly  so  called,  was 

the  most  important  division.     At  the  time  of 

the  Restoration  it  had  been  built,  for  the  most 

part,  of  wood  and  plaster  ;  the  few  bricks  that  were 

used  were  ill  baked  ;  the  booths  where  goods  were  ex- 

1  Lyson's  Environs  of  LoiiJon.     The  baptisms  at  Chelsea,  between  1G80 
and  1690,  were  only  forty-two  a  year. 
'  Cowley,  Discourse  of  Solitude. 


1 


Ch.  in.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  385 

posed  to  sale  projected  far  into  tlie  streets,  and  were 
overliung  by  the  upper  stones.  A  few  specimens  of 
this  architecture  may  still  be  seen  in  those  districts  which 
were  not  reached  by  the  great  fire.  That  fire  had,  in 
a  few  days,  covered  a  space  of  little  less  than  a  square 
mile  with  the  ruins  of  ei^htv-nine  churches  and  of 
thirteen  thousand  houses.  But  the  City  had  risen 
again  with  a  celerity  which  had  excited  the  admira- 
tion of  neighbouring  countries.  Unfortunately,  the  old 
lines  of  the  streets  had  been  to  a  great  extent  pre- 
served ;  and  those  lines,  originally  traced  in  an  age 
when  even  princesses  performed  their  journeys  on 
horseback,  were  often  too  narrow  to  allow  wheeled  car- 
riages to  pass  each  other  with  ease,  and  were  therefore 
ill  adapted  for  the  residence  of  wealthy  persons  in  an 
age  when  a  coach  and  six  was  a  fashionable  luxurj. 
The  style  of  building  was,  however,  far  superior  to  that 
of  the  City  which  had  perished.  The  ordinary  mate- 
rial was  brick,  of  much  better  quality  than  had  for- 
merly been  used.  On  the  sites  of  the  ancient  parish 
churches  had  arisen  a  multitude  of  new  domes,  towers, 
and  spires  which  bore  the  mark  of  the  fertile  genius  of 
Wren.  In  every  place  save  one  the  traces  of  the  great 
devastation  had  been  completely  effaced.  But  the 
<'row(ls  of  A^■()rkmen,  the  scaffolds  and  the  masses  of 
hewn  stone  were  still  to  be  seen  where  the  noblest  of 
Protestant  temples  was  slowly  rising  on  the  ruins  of  the 
old  Cathedral  of  St.  Paul.i 

1  The  fullest  and  most  trustwortliy  information  about  the  state  of  the 
build'mijs  of  London  at  tills  time  is  to  he  derived  from  the  maps  and  draw- 
iutrs  in  the  British  Museum  and  in  the  Pep)'sian  Library.  The  badness  of 
the  biieks  in  the  olil  buihlings  of  London  is  particularly  mentioned  in  tho 
Travels  of  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo.  There  is  an  account  of  the  works  at 
St.  Paul's  in  Ward's  London  .Spy.  I  am  almost  ushamed  to  quote  such 
nauseous  balderdash;  but  I  have  been  forced  to  descend  even  lower,  if 
possible,  in  search  of  materials. 

VOL.  I.  25 


386  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch,  III. 

The  whole  character  of  the  City  has,  since  that  time, 
undergone  a  complete  change.  At  present  the  bankers, 
the  mercliants,  and  tlie  chief  shopkeepers  repair  thither 
on  six  mornings  of  every  week  for  the  transaction  of 
business  :  but  they  reside  in  other  quarters  of  the  me- 
ti'opohs,  or  at  suburban  country  seats  surrounded  by 
slu'ubberies  and  flower  gardens.  This  revohition  in 
private  habits  has  produced  a  pohtical  revolution  of  no 
small  importance.  The  City  is  no  longer  regarded  by 
the  wealthiest  traders  Avith  that  attachment  which  every 
man  naturally  feels  for  his  home.  It  is  no  longer  asso- 
ciated in  their  minds  with  domestic  affections  and  en- 
dearments. The  fireside,  the  nursery,  the  social  table, 
the  quiet  bed  are  not  there.  Lombard  Street  and 
Threadneedle  Street  are  merely  places  where  men  toil 
and  accumulate.  They  go  elsewhere  to  enjoy  and  to 
*»xpend.  On  a  Sunday,  or  in  an  evening  after  the 
hours  of  business,  some  courts  and  alleys,  which  a  few 
hours  before  had  been  alive  with  hurrying  feet  and 
anxious  faces,  are  as  silent  as  the  glades  of  a  forest. 
The  chiefs  of  the  mercantile  interests  are  no  longer 
citizens.  They  avoid,  they  almost  contemn,  municipal 
honours  and  duties.  Those  honours  and  duties  are  aban- 
doned to  men  who,  though  useful  and  highly  respect- 
able, seldom  belong  to  the  princely  commercial  houses 
of  which  the  names  are  renowned  throughout  the  world. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  the  City  was  the  mer- 
chant's residence.  Those  mansions  of  the  great  old 
burghers  which  still  exist  have  been  turned  into  count- 
ing houses  and  warehouses  :  but  it  is  evident  that  they 
were  originally  not  inferior  in  magnificence  to  the  dwell- 
ings which  were  then  inhabited  by  the  nobility.  They 
sometimes  stand  in  retired  and  gloomy  courts,  and  are 
accessible   only  by  inconvenient   passages :    but  their 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  387 

dimensions  are  ample,  and  their  aspect  stately.  The 
entrances  are  decorated  with  richly  carved  pillars  and 
canopies.  The  staircases  and  landing  places  are  not 
wanting  in  grandeur.  The  floors  are  sometimes  of 
wood,  tessellated  after  the  fashion  of  France.  Tlie 
palace  of  Sir  Robert  Clayton,  in  the  Old  Jewry,  con- 
tained a  superb  banqueting  room  wainscoated  with 
cedar,  and,  adorned  with  battles  of  gods  and  giants  in 
fresco.^  Sir  Dudley  North  expended  four  thousand 
pounds,  a  sum  which  would  then  have  been  important 
to  a  Duke,  on  the  rich  furniture  of  his  reception  rooms 
in  Basinghall  Street.^  In  such  abodes,  under  the  last 
Stuarts,  the  heads  of  the  great  firms  lived  splendidly 
and  hospitably.  To  their  dwelling  place  they  Avere 
bound  by  the  strongest  ties  of  interest  and  affection. 
There  they  had  passed  their  youth,  had  made  their 
friendships,  had  courted  their  wives,  had  seen  their 
children  grow  up,  had  laid  the  remains  of  their  parents 
in  the  earth,  and  expected  that  their  own  remains 
would  be  laid.  That  intense  patriotism  which  is  pecu- 
liar to  the  members  of  societies  conoreo;ated  within  a 
narrow  space  was,  in  such  circumstances,  strongly  de- 
veloped. London  was,  to  the  Londoner,  what  Athens 
was  to  the  Athenian  of  the  age  of  Pericles,  what  Flor- 
ence was  to  the  Florentine  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
The  citizen  was  proud  of  the  grandeur  of  his  city, 
punctilious  about  her  claims  to  respect,  ambitious  of 
her  offices,  and  zealous  for  her  franchises. 

At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second  the 
pride  of  the  Londoners  was  smarting  from  a  cruel 
mortification.  The  old  charter  had  been  taken  away ; 
and  the  magistracy  had  been  remodelled.    All  the  civic 

1  Kvelyn's  Diary,  Sept.  20.  1672. 

2  Roger  North's  Life  of  Sir  Dudley  North. 


388  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IH. 

functionaries  were  Tories  ;  and  the  Whigs,  though  in 
numbers  and  in  wealth  superior  to  their  opponents, 
found  themselves  excluded  fi'om  every  local  dignity. 
Nevertheless,  the  external  splendour  of  the  municipal 
government  was  not  diminished,  nay,  was  rather  in- 
creased by  this. change.  For,  under  the  administration 
of  some  Puritans  who  had  lately  boinie  rule,  the  ancient 
fame  of  the  city  for  good  cheer  had  declined  :  but  under 
the  new  mao-istrates,  who  belonged  to  a  more  festive 
party,  and  at  whose  boards  guests  of  rank  and  fashion 
from  beyond  Temple  Bar  were  often  seen,  the  Guildhall 
and  the  halls  of  the  great  companies  were  enlivened  by 
many  sumptuous  banquets.  During  these  repasts,  odes, 
composed  by  the  j)oet  laureate  of  the  corporation,  in 
praise  of  the  King,  the  Duke,  and  the  Mayor,  were  sung 
to  music.  The  drinking  was  deep,  the  shouting  loud. 
An  observant  Tory,  who  had  often  shared  in  these  rev- 
els, has  remarked  that  the  practice  of  huzzaing  after 
drinking  healths  dates  from  this  joyous  period.^ 

The  magnificence  displayed  by  the  first  civic  magis- 
trate was  almost  regal.  The  gilded  coach,  indeed,  which 
is  now  annually  admired  by  the  crowd,  was  not  yet  a 
part  of  his  state.  On  great  occasions  he  appeai^ed  on 
horseback,  attended  by  a  long  cavalcade  inferior  in 
magnificence  only  to  that  which,  before  a  coronation, 
escorted  the  sovereio;n  from  the  Tower  to  Westminster. 
The  Lord  Mayor  was  never  seen  in  public  without  his 
rich  robe,  his  hood  of  black  velvet,  his  gold  chain,  his 
jewel,  and  a  great  attendance  of  harbingers  and  guards.^ 

1  North's  Examen.    This  most  amusing  writer  has  preserved  a  specimen 

of  the  sublime  raptures  in  which  the  Pindar  of  the  City  indulged:  — 

"  The  worshipful  Sir  John  Moor  ! 
After  ;ige  that  uaiiie  adore  !  " 

2  Chaniberlayne's   State  of  England,  1684;   Anglite  Metropolis,  1690 
Seymour's  London,  1734. 


Cii.  III.  J  STATE    OF    ENGLAND   IN    1G85.  359 

Nor  did  the  world  find  anything  ludicrous  in  the  pomp 
which    constantly  surrounded    hin>.     For    it  was    not 
more  than  became  the  place  which,  as  wielding    the 
strength  and  representing  the  dignity  of  the  City  of 
London,  he  was  entitled  to  occupy  in  the  state.     That 
(Jity,  being  then  not  only  without  equal  in  the  country, 
but  without  second,  had,  during  five  and  forty  years, 
exercised  almost  as  great  an  influence  on  the  politics  of 
England  as  Paris  has,  in  our  own  time,  exercised  on  the 
j)olitics  of  France.     In  intelligence  London  was  greatly 
in  advance  of  every  other  j)art  of  the  kingdom.    A  gov- 
ernnient,  supported  and  trusted  by  London,  could  in  a 
day  obtain  such  pecuniary  means  as  it  would  have  taken 
months  to  collect  from  the  rest  of  the  island.    Nor  were 
the   military  resources   of  the   capital  to   be  despised. 
The  power  which  the  Lord  Lieutenants  exercised  in 
other  parts  of  the  kingdom  was  in  London  intrusted  to 
a  Commission  of  eminent  citizens.    Under  the  orders  of 
this  Commission  were  twelve  reoiments  of  foot  and  two 
regiments  of  horse.     An  army  of  drapers'  apprentices 
and  journeymen  tailors,  with  common  councihnen  for 
captains  and  aldermen  for  colonels,  might  not  indeed 
have  been  able   to   stand    its  ground  against  regular 
troops ;  but  there  were  then  very  few  regular  troops  in 
the  kingdom.     A  town,  therefore,   which  could  send 
forth,  at  an  hour's  notice,  thousands  of  men,  abound- 
ing in  natural  courage,  provided  with  tolerable  wea])ons, 
and  not  altogether  untinctured  with  martial  discipline, 
could   not    but    be    a  valuable   ally  and    a   formidable 
enemy.     It  was  not  forgotten  that  ILimijden  and  I'ym 
had  been  ])rotected  from  lawless  tyranny  by  the  L(jn(lon 
trainbands  ;  that,  in  the  great  crisis  of  the  civil  war,  the 
London  trainbands  had  marched  to  raise  the  siege  of 
Gloucester  ;  or  that,  in  the  moveirtent  against  the  mill- 


390  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  ICh.  III. 

tary  tyrants  wliich  followed  the  downfall  of  Richard 
Cromwell,  the  Lortdon  trainbands  had  borne  a  signal 
part.  In  truth,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that,  but 
for  the  hostility  of  the  City,  Charles  the  First  would 
never  have  been  vanquished,  and  that,  without  the  help 
of  the  City,  Charles  the  Second  could  scarcely  have 
been  restored. 

These  considerations  may  serve  to  explain  why,  in 
spite  of  that  attraction  which  had,  during  a  long  course 
of  years,  gradually  drawn  the  aristocracy  westward,  a 
few  men  of  high  rank  had  continued,  till  a  very  recent 
period,  to  dwell  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Exchange  and  of 
the  Guildhall.  Shaftesbury  and  Buckingham,  while 
eno-aged  in  bitter  and  unscrupulous  opposition  to  the 
government,  had  thought  that  they  could  nowhere 
carry  on  their  intrigues  so  conveniently  or  so  securely 
as  under  the  protection  of  the  City  magistrates  and  the 
City  militia.  Shaftesbury  had  therefore  lived  in  Alders- 
gate  Street,  at  a  house  which  may  still  easily  be  known 
by  pilasters  and  wreaths,  the  graceful  work  of  Inigo. 
Buckingham  had  ordered  his  mansion  near  Charing 
Cross,  once  the  abode  of  the  Archbishops  of  York,  to 
be  pulled  down  ;  and,  while  streets  and  alleys  which 
are  still  named  after  him  were  rising  on  that  site,  chose 
to  reside  in  Dowgate.^ 

These,  however,  were  rare  exceptions.  Almost  all 
Faphionabi3  the  uoble  families  of  England  had  long  mi- 
Mpitai.  "  grated  beyond  the  walls.  The  district  where 
most  of  their  town  houses  stood  lies  between  the  City 
and  the  remons  which  are  now  considered  as  fashion- 
able.  A  few  great  men  still  retained  their  hereditary 
hotels    in  the   Strand.     The  stately  dwellings  on  the 

1  North's  Exaraen,  IIG.     Wood,  Ath.  Ox.  Shaftesbury.     The  Duke  o< 
3.'b  Litany. 


Cii.  III-l  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  391 

south  and  west  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  the  Piazza  of 
Covent  Garden,  Southampton  Square,  whioli  is  now 
called  P>l()omsbury  Square,  and  King's  Square  in  Soho 
Fields,  which  is  now  called  Soho  Square,  were  among 
the  favourite  spots.  Foreign  princes  were  carried  to 
see  Bloomsbury  Square,  as  one  of  the  wonders  of 
England.^  Sohc  Sfjuare,  which  had  just  been  built, 
was  to  ouf  ancestors  a  subject  of  pride  with  which 
their  posterity  will  hardly  sympathize.  Monmouth 
Square  had  been  the  name  while  the  fortunes  of  the 
Duke  of  Monmouth  flom'ished  ;  and  on  the  southern 
side  towered  his  mansion.  The  front,  though  ungrace- 
ful, was  lofty  and  richly  adorned.  The  walls  of  the 
princi])al  aj)artments  were  finely  sculptured,  with  fruit, 
foliaixe,  and  armorial  boarino;s,  and  were  huno;  with 
embroidered  satin. ^  Every  trace  of  this  magnificence 
has  long  disappeared  ;  and  no  aristocratical  mansion  is 
to  be  found  in  that  once  aristocratical  quarter.  A  little 
way  north  from  Holborn,  and  on  the  verge  of  the  pas- 
tures and  cornfields,  rose  two  celebrated  palaces,  each 
with  an  ample  garden.  One  of  them,  then  called  South- 
ampton House,  and  subsequently  Bedford  House,  was 
removed  about  fifty  years  ago  to  make  room  for  a  new 
city,  which  now  covers,  with  its  squares,  streets,  and 
churches,  a  vast  area,  renowned  in  the  seventeenth 
centuiy  for  peaches  and  snipes.  The  other,  Montague 
House,  celebrated  for  its  frescoes  and  furniture,  was,  a 
few  months  after  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second, 
burned  to  the  ground,  and  was  S})eedily  succeeded  by 
a  more  magnificent  Montague  House,  which,  having 
been  long  the  repository  of  such  various  and  precious 

1  Tnivels  of  till-  Grand  Duke  Cosmo. 

2  Cliambcrlayiic's  Statu  of  England,  1G81;  rennant's  London;  Smith's 
Life  of  Nollukuus. 


392  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND,  [Ch.  III. 

treasures  of  art,  sc:ience,  and  learning  as  were  scarce 
ever  before  asseiiibled  under  a  single  roof,  has  just  given 
])lace  to  an  edifice  more  magnificent  still.^ 

Nearer  to  the  court,  on  a  space  called  Saint  James's 
Fields,  had  just  been  built  Saint  James's  Square  and 
Jermyn  Street.  Saint  James's  Church  had  recently 
been  opened  for  the  accommodation  of  the  inhabitants 
of  this  new  quarter.^  Golden  Square,  which  was  in 
the  next  generation  inhabited  by  lords  and  ministers 
of  state,  had  not  yet  been  begun.  Indeed  the  only 
dwellings  to  be  seen  on  the  north  of  Piccadilly  were 
three  or  four  isolated  and  almost  rural  mansions,  of 
which  the  most  celebrated  was  the  costly  pile  erected 
by  Clarendon,  and  nicknamed  Dunkirk  House.  It  had 
been  purchased  after  its  founder's  downfall  by  tlie  Duke 
of  Albemarle.  The  Clarendon  Hotel  and  Albemarle 
Street  still  preserve  the  memory  of  the  site. 

He  who  then  rambled  to  what  is  now  the  gayest  and 
most  crowded  part  of  Regent  Street  foiuid  himself  in  a 
solitude,  and  was  sometimes  so  fortunate  as  to  have  a 
shot  at  a  woodcock.^  On  the  north  the  Qxford  road 
ran  between  hedges.  Three  or  four  hundred  yards  to 
the  south  were  the  garden  walls  of  a  few  great  houses 
which  were  considered  as  quite  out  of  town.  On  the 
west  was  a  meadow  renowned  for  a  spring  from  which, 
long  afterwards,  Conduit  Street  was  named.  On  the 
east  was  a  field  not  to  be  passed  without  a  shudder  by 
any  Londoner  of  that  age.  There,  as  in  a  place  far 
from  the  haunts  of  men,  had  been  dug,  twenty  years 
before,  when  the  great  plague  was  raging,  a  pit  into 

1  i:velyn's  Diary,  Oct.  10.  1G83,  Jan.  19.  168f  • 

2  Stat.  1  Jac.  IL  c.  22.     Evelyn's  Uiaiy,  Dec.  7.  1684. 

3  Old  General  Og-lethorjie,  who  died  in  1785,  used  to  bnast  that  he  had 
ah"t  birds  here  in  Anne's  reij,'n.  See  Pennant's  London,  and  the  Gentle- 
man's Magazine  for  July,  1785. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  303 

which  the  dead  carts  had  nightly  shot  corpses  by  scores. 
It  was  po))u]ai-ly  beheved  that  the  earth  was  deeply 
tainted  with  infection,  and  could  not  be  disturbed  with- 
out imminent  risk  to  human  life.  No  foundations  were 
laid  there  till  two  generations  had  passed  without  any 
return  of  the  pestilence,  and  till  the  ghastly  spot  had 
long  been  surrounded  by  buildings.^ 

We  should  greatly  err  if  we  were  to  suppose  that 
any  of  the  streets  and  squares  then  bore  the  same 
aspect  as  at  present.  The  great  majority  of  the  houses, 
indeed,  have,  since  that  time,  been  wholly,  or  in  great 
part,  rebuilt.  If  the  most  fashionable  parts  of  the 
capital  could  be  placed  before  us,  such  as  they  then 
were,  we  should  be  disgusted  by  their  squalid  appear- 
ance, and  poisoned  by  their  noisome  atmosphere.  Jn 
Covent  Garden  a  filthy  and  noisy  market  \v:is  h^Id 
close  to  the  dwellings  of  the  great.  Fruit  women 
screamed,  carters  foug-ht,  cabbaoe  stalks  and  rotten 
apples  accunudated  in  heaps  at  the  thresholds  of  the 
Countess  of  Berkshire  and  of  the  Bishoj)  of  Durham.'-^ 

The  centre  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  was  an  open  space 
where  the  rabble  cono;reo:ated  every  evenino;,  Avithin  a 

OCT  t'  O^ 

few  yards  of  Cardigan  House  and  Winchester  House, 
to  hear  mountebanks  harangue,  to  see  bears  dance, 
and  to  set  dogs  at  oxen.  Rubbish  was  shot  in  every 
part  of  the  area.  Iloi'ses  were  exercised  thei'e.  The 
beggars  were  as  noisy  and  importunate  as  in  the  worst 
governed  cities  of  the  Continent.  A  Lincoln's  Inn 
nnim])er  was  a  ])roverb.     The  whole  fraternity  knew 

1  The  pest  lield  will  be  seen  in  maps  of  London  as  late  as  the  end  of 
George  the  First's  reipn. 

3  Sec  a  very  curious  plan  of  Covent  Garden  made  aljout  1000,  and  en- 
graved li>r  Siuitli's  Histiiry  o' Westminster.  See  also  Ilogarih's  Morning, 
painted  while  some  of  the  houses  in  the  Piazza  were  still  occupied  by  people 
of  fashion. 


394  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

the  arms*  and  liveries  of  every  charitably  disposed 
rrraiulee  in  the  iieighbourliood,  and,  as  soon  as  his 
lordship's  coach  and  six  appeared,  came  hopping  and 
crawling  in  crowds  to  persecute  him.  These  disorders 
lasted,  in  spite  of  many  accidents,  and  of  some  legal 
prbceedings,  till,  in  the  reign  of  George  the  Second,  Sir 
Joseph  Jekyll,  Master  of  the  Rolls,  was  knocked  down 
and  nearly  killed  in  the  middle  of  the  square.  Then 
at  length  palisades  were  set  up,  and  a  pleasant  garden 
laid  out.^ 

Saint  James's  Square  was  a  receptacle  for  all  the 
offal  and  cinders,  for  all  the  dead  cats  and  dead  dogs 
of  Westminster.  At  one  time  a  cudgel  player  kept 
the  ring  there.  At  another  time  an  impudent  squat- 
ter settled  himself  there,  and  built  a  shed  for  rubbish 
under  the  windows  of  the  g-ilded  saloons  in  which  the 
first  magnates  of  the  realm,  Norfolks,  Ormonds,  Kents, 
and  Pembrokes,  gave  banquets  and  balls.  It  was  not 
till  these  nuisances  had  lasted  through  a  whole  genera- 
tion, and  till  much  had  been  written  about  them,  that 
the  inhabitants  applied  to  Parliament  for  permission  to 
put  up  rails,  and  to  plant  trees.^ 

When  such  was  the  state  of  the  region  inhabited  by 
the  most  luxurious  portion   of  society,  we  may  easily 

1  London  Spy;  Tom  Brown's  Comical  View  of  London  and  Westminster, 
Turner's  Propositions  for  tlie  employini;  of  the  Poor,  1G78;  Daily  Courant 
and  Daily  Journal  of  June,  7.  1733;  Case  of  Michael  v.  Allestree,  in  1676 
2  Levinz.  p.  172.  Michael  had  been  run  over  by  two  horses  which  Alles- 
tree was  breaking^  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  The  declaration  set  forth  that 
the  defendant  "  porta  deux  ehivals  ungovernable  en  un  coach,  et  improvide, 
incaute,  et  absque  debita  coiisideratione  ineptitudinis  loci  la  eux  drive  pur 
eux  faire  tractable  et  apt  pur  un  coach,  quels  ehivals,  pur  ceo  que,  per  leur 
ferocite,  ne  poient  estre  rule,  curre  sur  le  plaintiff  et  le  noie." 

2  Stat.  12  Geo.  I.  c.  25;  Commons'  Journals,  Feb.  2-5.  March  2.  17 2|- 
London  Gardener,  1712;  Evening  Post,  March  23.  1731.  I  have  not  beer, 
able  to  find  this  number  of  the  Evening  Post;  I  theiefore  quote  it  on  tha 
faith  of  Mr.  Malcolm,  who  mentions  it  in  his  History  of  London. 


Ch.  III.l  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  395 

believe  that  the  great  body  of  the  population  siiffei-od 
what  would  now  be  considered  as  insupportable  griev- 
ances. The  pavement  was  detestable  ;  all  foreigners 
cried  shame  u])on  it.  The  drainage  was  so  bad  that 
in  rainy  weather  the  gutters  soon  became  torrents. 
Several  facetious  poets  have  commemorated  the  fury 
with  which  these  black  rivulets  roared  down  Snow 
Hill  and  Ludo;ate  Hill,  bearino;  to  Fleet  Ditch  a  vast 
tribute  of  animal  and  vegetable  filth  from  the  stalls  of 
butchers  and  greengrocers.  This  flood  was  profusely 
thrown  to  right  and  left  by  coaches  and  carts.  To 
keep  as  far  from  the  carriage  road  as  possible  was 
therefore  the  wish  of  every  ])edestrian.  The  mild  and 
timid  gave  the  wall.  The  bold  and  athletic  took  it. 
If  two  roisterers  met,  they  cocked  their  hats  in  each 
other's  faces,  and  pushed  each  other  about  till  the 
weaker  was  shoved  towards  the  kennel.  If  he  was  a 
mere  bully  he  sneaked  off,  muttering  that  he  should 
find  a  time.  If  he  was  ])ugnacious,  the  encounter  prob- 
ably ended  in  a  duel  behind  Montague  House.^ 

The  houses  were  not  numbei'cd.  There  would  indeed 
have  been  little  advantage  in  numbering  them  ;  for  of 
the  coachmen,  chairmen,  porters,  and  errand  boys  of 
Ivoiulitii,  a  very  small  pro])ortion  could  read.  It  was 
necessary  to  use  marks  which  the  most  ignorant  coiild 
understand.  The  shops  were  therefore  distinguished 
by  painted  or  sculptured  signs,  which  gave  a  gay  and 
grotesque  aspect  to  the  streets.  The  walk  from  Charing 
Ci'oss  to  Whitechapel  lay  through  an  endless  succes- 
sion of  Saracens'  Heads,  Royal  Oaks,  Blue  Bears,  and 


1  I-eUrc<>  sur  Ics  Anglois,  writtnn  early  in  the  reiirn  of  William  the  Third  ; 
Swift's  City  Sliowftr;  Ga3''s  Trivia.  Johnson  used  to  relate  a  curious 
conversation  which  he  had  with  his  mother  ahout  giving  and  taking  tha 
wail. 


396  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

Golden  Lambs,  which  disappeared  when  they  were  no 
longer  required  for  the  direction  of  the  common  people. 
When  the  evening  closed  in,  the  difficulty  and  danger 
of  walking  about  London  became  serious  indeed.     Tlie 
garret  windows  were  opened,  and  pails  were  emptied, 
with   little  regard  to   those  who  were  passing  below. 
Falls,  bruises,  and  broken  bones  were  of  constant  oc- 
currence.   For,  till  the  last  year  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second,  most  of  the  streets  were  left  in  profound 
darkness.     Thieves  and  robbers  plied  their  trade  with 
impunity :  yet  they  were  hardly  so  terrible  to  peace- 
able  citizens  as  another  class  of  ruffians.     It  was   a 
favourite  amusement  of  dissolute  young  gentlemen  to 
swagger  by  night  about  the  town,  breaking  windows, 
upsetting  sedans,  beating  quiet  men,  and  offering  rude 
caresses  to  pretty  women.     Several  dynasties  of  these 
tyrants    had,  since   the   Restoration,  domineered   over 
the  streets.     The    Muns    and  Tityre  Tus   had    given 
place  to  the  Hectors,  and  the  Hectors  had  been  re- 
cently succeeded  by  the  Scourers.     At  a  later  period 
arose  the  Nicker,  the   Hawcubite,  and  the  yet  more 
I'oiice  of        dreaded  name  of  Mohawk.^     The  machinery 
London.        ^^^  keeping  the  peace  was  utterly  contemp- 
tible.    There  was   an  Act  of  Common  Council  which 
provided  that  more  than  a  thousand  watchmen  should 
be  constantly  on  the  alert  in  the  city,  from  sunset  to 

'  Oldham's  Imitation  of  the  3d  Satire  of  Juvenal,  1682  ;  Sliadwell's 
Scourers,  1690.  Many  other  authorities  will  readil^v  occur  to  all  who  are 
acquainted  with  the  popular  literature  of  that  and  the  succeeding  genera- 
lion.  It  may  be  suspected  that  some  of  the  Tityre  Tus,  like  good  Cava- 
liers, broke  Milton's  windows  shortly  after  the  Restoration.  I  am  confident 
that  he  was  thinking  of  those  pests  of  London  when  he  dictated  the  noble 
1  nes,  — 

"  And  in  luxurious  cities,  when  the  noise 
Of  riot  ascends  above  their  loftiest  towers, 
And  injury  and  outrage,  and  when  night 
Darkens  the  streets,  then  wander  fortli  the  sons 
Of  Belial,  flown  with  insolence  and  wine." 


Ch.  ni]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  397 

sunrise,  and  that  every  inliabitant  should  take  his  tuni 
of  duty.  But  this  Act  was  neghg-ently  executed.  Few 
of  tliose  Avho  were  summoned  left  their  homes  ;  and 
those  few  generally  found  it  more  agreeable  to  tipple 
in  alehouses  than  to  pace  the  streets. ^ 

It  ought  to  be  noticed  that,  in  the  last  year  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  began  a  great  ughtingof 
change  in  the  police  of  London,  a  change  which  ''''*°'^°°- 
lias  perhaps  added  as  much  to  the  happiness  of  the  body 
of  the  people  as  revolutions  of  much  greater  fame.  An 
ingenious  projector,  named  Edward  Pleming,  obtained 
letters  patent  conveying  to  him,  for  a  term  of  years, 
the  exclusive  right  of  lighting  up  London.  He  under- 
took, for  a  moderate  consideration,  to  place  a  light 
before  every  tenth  door,  on  moonless  nights,  from 
Michaelmas  to  Lady  Day,  and  from  six  to  twelve  of 
the  clock.  Those  who  now  see  the  capital  all  the  year 
round,  from  dusk  to  dawn,  blazing  with  a  splendour 
compared  with  which  the  illuminations  for  La  Hogue 
and  Blenheim  would  have  looked  pale,  may  perhaj)s 
smile  to  think  of  Heming's  lanterns,  which  glimmered 
feebly  before  one  house  in  ten  during  a  small  part  of 
one  night  in  three.  But  such  was  not  the  feeling  of 
his  contemporaries.  His  scheme  was  enthusiastically 
apjilauded,  and  furiously  attacked.  The  friends  of  im- 
provement extolled  him  as  the  greatest  of  all  the  bene- 
factors of  his  city.  What,  they  asked,  were  the  boasted 
inventions  of  Archimedes,  when  compared  with  the 
achievement  of  the  man  who  had  turned  the  nocturnal 
shades  inta  noon  day  ?  In  spite  of  these  eloquent  eu- 
loiries  the  cause  of  darkness  was  not  left  undefended. 
There  were  fools  in  that  age  who  opposed  the  introduc- 
tion of  what  was  called  the  new  light  as  strenuously  as 

1  Seymour's  London. 


398  HISTORY    OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill, 

fools  in  our  age  have  opposed  the  introduction  of  vacci- 
nation and  raih'oads,  as  strenuously  as  the  fools  of  an 
age  anterior  to  the  dawn  of  history  doubtless  opposed 
the  introduction  of  the  plough  and  of  alphabetical  writ- 
ing. Many  years  after  the  date  of  Heming's  patent 
there  were  extensive  districts  in  which  no  lamp  was 
seen.^ 

We  may  easily  imagine  what,  in  sucli  times,  must 
have  been  the  state  of  the  quarters  of  Lon- 
don which  were  peopled  by  the  outcasts  of 
society.  Among  those  quarters  one  had  attained  a 
scandalous  preeminence.  On  the  confines  of  the  City 
and  the  Temple  had  been  founded,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  a  House  of  Carmelite  Friars,  distinguished  by 
their  Avhite  hoods.  The  precinct  of  this  house  had, 
before  the  Reformation,  been  a  sanctuary  for  criminals, 
and  still  retained  the  privilege  of  protecting  debtors 
from  arrest.  Insolvents  consequently  were  to  be  found 
in  every  dwelling,  from  cellar  to  garret.  Of  these  a 
large  proportion  were  knaves  and  libertines,  and  were 
followed  to  their  asylum  by  women  more  abandoned 
than  themselves.  The  civil  power  was  unable  to  keep 
order  in  a  district  swarming  with  such  inliabitants  ;  and 
thus  Whitefriars  became  the  favoui-ite  resort  of  all  who 
wished  to  be  emancipated  from  the  restraints  of  the 
law.  Though  the  immunities  legally  belonging  to  the 
place  extended  only  to  cases  of  debt,  cheats,  false  wit- 
nesses, forgers,  and  highwaymen  found  refuge  there. 
For  amidst  a  rabble  so  desperate  no  peace  officer's 
life  was  in  safety.  At  the  cry  of  "  Rescne  "  bullies 
with  swords  and  cudgels,  and  termagant  hags  with  spits 
and  broomsticks,  poured  forth  by  hundreds ;  and  the 

1  AngliiE  Metropolis,  1690,  Sect.  17.  entitled,  "  Of  the  new  lights."    Sey- 
mour's London. 


Cii.  ni.l  STATK    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  399 

irtrudor  was  fortunate  if  he  escaped  back  into  Fleet 
(Street,  hustled,  stripi)ed,  and  pumped  upon.  Even  the 
warrant  of  the  Cliief  Justice  of  England  could  not  be 
executed  without  the  help  of  a  company  of  musketeers. 
Such  relics  of  the  bai'barism  of  the  darkest  ao-es  were 
to  be  found  within  a  sliort  walk  of  the  chambers  where 
Somers  was  studying  history  and  law,  of  the  chapel 
Avhere  Tillotson  was  preaching,  of  the  coffee  house 
where  Dryden  was  passing  judgment  on  poems  and 
plays,  and  of  the  hall  where  the  Royal  Society  was 
examining  the  astronomical  system  of  Isaac  Newton.^ 

Each  of  the  two  cities  which  made  up  the  capital  of 
Enixland*  had    its  own   centre   of  attraction.    „, 

The  court. 

In  the  metropolis  of  commerce  the  point  of 
convergence  w-as  the  Exchange  ;  in  the  metropolis  of 
fashion  the  Palace.  But  the  Palace  did  not  retain  its 
influence  so  loiio;  as  the  Exchano;e.  The  Revolution 
completely  altered  the  relations  between  the  court  and 
the  hijxher  classes  of  society.  It  was  by  decrees  dis- 
covered  that  the  King,  in  his  individual  capacity,  had 
very  little  to  give  ;  that  coronets  and  garters,  bishop- 
lics  and  emliassies,  lordships  of  the  Treasury  and  tell- 
ershijjs  (jf  the  Exchcfiuer,  nay,  even  charges  in  the 
royal  stiul  and  bedchamber,  were  really  bestowed,  not 
by  him,  but  by  his  advisers.  Every  ambitious  and 
covetous  man  perceived  that  he  would  consult  his  own 
interest  far  better  by  acquiring  the  dominion  of  a  Cor- 
nish borough,  and  by  rendering  crood  service  to  the 
ministry  during  a  critical  session,  than  by  becoming 
the  companion,  or  even  the  minion,  of  his  prince.  It 
was  therefore  in  the  antechambers,  not  of  George  the 
First  and  of  George  the  Second,  but  of  Walpole  and 

1  Stowe's  Survey  of  London;    Sliadwell's   Squire   of  Alsalia;    Ward's 
London  Spj';  Stat.  8  &  9  Gul.  IIL  cap.  27. 


400  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

of  Pelliam,  that  the  daily  crowd  of  courtiers  was  to  be 
found.  It  is  also  to  be  remarked  that  the  same  revohi- 
tion  which  made  it  impossible  that  our  Kings  should 
use  the  patronage  of  the  state,  merely  for  the  purpose 
of  gratifying  their  personal  predilections,  gave  us  sev- 
eral Kings  unfitted  by  their  education  and  habits  to  be 
gracious  and  affable  hosts.  They  had  been  boini  and 
bred  on  the  Continent.  They  never  felt  themselves  at 
home  in  our  island.  If  they  spoke  our  language,  they 
s})oke  it  inelegantly  and  with  effort.  Our  national 
character  they  never  fully  understood.  Our  national 
manners  they  hardly  attempted  to  acquire.  The  most 
important  part  of  their  duty  they  performed  better  than 
any  ruler  who  had  preceded  them  :  for  they  governed 
strictly  according  to  law  :  but  they  could  not  be  the 
first  gentlemen  of  the  realm,  the  heads  of  polite  society. 
If  ever  they  unbent,  it  was  in  a  very  small  circle  where 
hardly  an  English  face  was  to  be  seen  ;  and  they  were 
never  so  hap[)y  as  when  they  could  escape  for  a  sum- 
mer to  their  native  land.  They  had  indeed  their  days 
of  reception  for  our  nobility  and  gentry ;  but  the  re- 
ception was  mere  matter  of  form,  and  became  at  last 
as  solemn  a  ceremony  as  a  funeral. 

Not  such  was  the  court  of  Charles  the  Second. 
Whitehall,  when  he  dwelt  there,  was  the  focus  of 
political  intrigue  and  of  fashionable  gaiety.  Half  the 
jobbing  and  half  the  flirting  of  the  metropolis  went  on 
under  his  roof.  Whoever  could  make  himself  agree- 
able  to  the  prince,  or  could  secure  the  good  offices  of 
the  mistress,  might  hope  to  rise  in  the  world  without 
rendering  any  service  to  the  government,  without  being 
even  known  by  sight  to  any  minister  of  state.  This 
courtier  got  a  frigate,  and  that  a  company;  ;  a  third  the 
pardon  of  a  rich  offender ;  a  fourth,  a  lease  of  crown 


Ch.  III.]  .  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  401 

land  on  easy  terms.  If  the  King  notified  his  pleasure 
that  a  briefless  lawyer  should  be  made  a  judge,  or  that 
a  libertine  baronet  should  be  made  a  peer,  the  gravest 
counsellors,  after  a  little  murmuring,  submitted.^  In- 
terest, therefore,  drew  a  constant  press  of  suitors  to  the 
gates  of  the  palace  ;  and  those  gates  always  stood  wide. 
The  King  kept  open  house  every  day,  and  all  day  long, 
for  the  good  society  of  London,  the  extreme  Whigs  only 
excepted.  Hardly  any  gentleman  had  any  difficulty  in 
making  his  way  to  the  royal  presence.  The  levee  was 
exactly  what  the  word  imports.  Some  men  of  quality 
came  every  morning  to  stand  round  their  master,  to 
chat  with  him  while  his  wicr  was  combed  and  his  ci'avat 
tied,  and  to  accompany  him  in  his  early  walk  through 
the  Park.  All  persons  who  had  been  properly  intro- 
duced might,  without  any  special  invitation,  go  to  see 
him  dine,  sup,  dance,  and  play  at  hazard,  and  might 
liave  the  pleasure  of  hearing  him  tell  stories,  which 
indeed  he  told  remarkably  well,  about  his  flight  from 
Worcester,  and  about  the  misery  which  he  had  en- 
dured when  he  was  a  state  prisoner  in  the  hancj^i  of 
the  canting  meddling  preachers  of  Scotland.  By- 
standers whom  His  Majesty  recognised  often  came  in 
for  a  courteous  word.  This  proved  a  far  more  success- 
fill  kingcraft  than  any  that  his  father  or  grandfather 
had  practised.  It  was  not  easy  for  the  most  austere 
republican  of  the  school  of  Marvel  to  resist  the  fasci- 
nation of  so  much  (rood  humour  and  afl'ability :  and 
many  a  veteran  Cavalier,  in  whose  heart  the  remem- 
brance of  unrequited  sacrifices  and  services  had  been 
festering  during  twenty  years,  was  compensated  in  one 

^  See  Sir  l{oj;er  North's  account  of  the  way  in  whicli  Wrif^ht  was  made 
a  judge,  and  Clarendon's  account  of  the  way  in  which  Sir  Gt'orge  Savila 
was  made  a  peer. 

VOL.  I.  2G 


402  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  '  [Ch.  Ill 

moment  for  wounds  and  sequestrations  by  his  sover- 
eign's kind  nod,  and  "  God  bless  you,  my  old  friend  !  " 

Whitehall  naturally  became  the  chief  staple  of  news. 
Whenever  there  was  a  rumour  that  anything  important 
had  happened  or  was  about  to  happen,  people  hastened 
thither  to  obtain  intellioence  from  the  fountain  head. 
The  galleries  presented  the  appearance  of  a  modern 
club  room  at  an  anxious  time.  They  were  full  of 
people  inquiring  whether  the  Dutch  mail  was  in,  what 
tidings  the  express  from  France  had  brought,  whether 
John  Sobiesky  had  beaten  the  Turks,  whether  the 
Doge  of  Genoa  was  really  at  Paris.  These  were  mat- 
ters about  which  it  was  safe  to  talk  aloud.  But  there 
were  subjects  concerning  which  information  was  asked 
and  given  in  whispers.  Had  Halifax  got  the  better  of 
Rochester  ?  Was  there  to  be  a  Parliament  ?  Was  the 
Duke  of  York  really  going  to  Scotland  ?  Had  Mon- 
mouth really  been  summoned  from  the  Hague  ?  Men 
tried  to  read  the  countenance  of  every  minister  as  he 
went  through  the  throng  to  and  from  the  royal  closet. 
All  «sorts  of  auo;uries  were  drawn  from  the  tone  in 
which  His  Majesty  spoke  to  the  Lord  President,  or 
from  the  laugh  with  which  His  Majesty  honoured  a  jest 
of  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  ;  and  in  a  few  hours  the  hopes 
and  fears  inspired  by  such  slight  indications  had  spread 
to  all  the  coffee  houses  from  St.  James's  to  the  Tower.^ 

The  coffee  house  must  not  be  dismissed  with  a  cur- 
The  coffee  sory  mention.  It  might  indeed  at  that  time 
have  been  not  improperly  called  a  most  im- 
portant political   institution.     No  Parliament  had  sat 

1  The  sources  from  which  I  have  drnwn  ni}'  information  about  the  state 
of  the  court  are  too  luimerous  to  recapituhite.  Among  them  are  the  De- 
spatches of  BariUon,  Van  Citters,  Ronquillo  and  Adda,  the  Travels  of  the 
(Jiand  Duke  Co.-imo,  tlie  works  of  Roger  North,  the  Diaries  of  Pepys,  Eve- 
lyn, and  Teonge,  and  tlie  iMenioirs  of  <7ranimont  and  Reresby. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  403 

for  years.  The  municipal  council  of  the  City  hud 
ceased  to  speak  the  sense  of  the  citizens.  Public 
meetings,  harangues,  resolutions,  and  the  rest  of  the 
modern  machinery  of  agitation  had  not  yet  come  into 
fashion.  Nothing  resembling  the  modern  newspaper 
existed.  In  such  circumstances  the  coffee  houses  were 
the  chief  organs  through  which  the  public  opinion  of 
the  meti'opolis  vented  itself. 

The  first  of  these  establishments  had  been  set  up,  in 
the  time  of  the  Commonwealth,  by  a  Turkey  merchant, 
who  had  acquired  among  the  JVIahometans  a  taste  for 
their  favourite  beverajxe.  The  convenience  of  being 
able  to  make  appointments  in  any  part  of  the  town, 
and  of  being  able  to  pass  evenings  socially  at  a  very 
small  charge,  was  so  great  that  the  I'ashion  spread  fast. 
Every  man  of  the  upper  or  middle  class  went  daily  to 
his  coffee  house  to  learn  the  news  and  to  discuss  it. 
Everv  coffee  house  had  one  or  more  orators  to  whose 
eloquence  the  crowd  listened  with  admiration,  and  who 
soon  became,  what  the  journalists  of  our  own  time  have 
been  called,  a  fourth  Estate  of  the  realm.  The  court 
had  lontr  seen  with  vmeasiness  the  rrrowtli  of  this  new 
power  in  the  state.  An  attempt  had  been  made,  during 
Danbv's  administration,  to  close  the  coffee  houses.  But 
men  of  all  parties  missed  their  usual  places  of  resort  so 
much  that  there  was  an  universal  outcry.  The  gov- 
ernment did  not  venture,  in  opposition  to  a  feeling  so 
stronff  and  w'leral,  to  enforce  a  recnlation  of  which  the 
legality  might  well  be  questioned.  Since  that  time  ten 
years  had  elapsed,  and  during  those  years  the  number 
and  influence  of  the  coffee  houses  had  been  constantly 
increasing.  Foreigners  remarked  that  the  coffee  house 
was  that  which  especially  distinguished  London  from 
all  other  cities ;    that  the   coffee  house  was  the   Lon- 


404  HISTORY   OP    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

doner's  home,  and  that  those  who  wislied  to  find  a 
gentleman  commonly  asked,  not  whether  he  lived  in 
Fleet  Street  or  Chancery  Lane,  but  whether  he  fre- 
quented the  Grecian  or  the  Rainbow.  Nobody  was 
excluded  from  these  places  who  laid  down  his  penny 
at  the  bar.  Yet  eveiy  rank  and  profession,  and  every 
shade  of  religious  and  political  opinion,  had  its  own 
head  quarters.  There  were  houses  near  St.  James's 
Park  where  fops  congregated,  their  heads  and  shoulders 
covered  with  black  or  flaxen  wigs,  not  less  ample  tlian 
those  which  are  now  worn  by  the  Chancellor  and  by 
the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  wig  came 
from  Paris,  and  so  did  the  rest  of  the  fine  gentleman's 
ornaments,  his  embroidered  coat,  his  fringed  gloves,  and 
the  tassel  wliich  upheld  his  pantaloons.  The  conversa- 
tion was  in  that  dialect  which,  loner  after  it  had  ceased 
to  be  spoken  in  fashionable  circles,  continued,  in  the 
mouth  of  Lord  Foppington,  to  excite  the  mirth  of  the- 
atres.^ The  atmosphere  was  like  that  of  a  perfumer's 
shop.  Tobacco  in  any  other  form  than  that  of  richly 
scented  snuff  was  held  iii  abomination.  If  any  clown, 
ignorant  of  the  usages  of  the  house,  called  for  a  pipe, 
the  sneers  of  the  whole  assembly  and  the  short  answers 
of  the  waiters  soon  convinced  him  that  he  had  better 
go  somewhere  else.  Nor,  indeed,  M-ould  he  have  had 
far  to  go.  For,  in  general,  the  coffee  rooms  reeked 
with  tobacco  like  a  guardroom  ;  and  strangers  some- 
times expressed  their  surprise  that  so  many  people 
should  leave  their  own  firesides  to  sit  in  the  midst  of 
eternal   foo;  and  stench.     Nowhere  was   the   smoking 

1  The  chiof  peculiarity  of  this  dialect  was  tiiat,  in  a  larfje  dnss  of  words, 
the  O  was  pronounced  like  A.  Thus  Lord  was  pronounced  Lard.  See 
Vanbrugh  s  Relapse.  Lord  Sunderland  was  a  great  master  of  this  court 
tune,  as  Roger  North  calls  it;  and  Titus  Gates  affected  it  in  the  hope  of 
passing  for  a  fine  gentleman.    Examen,  77.  254. 


Ch.  ni.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  405 

more  constant  than  at  Will's.  That  celebrated  house, 
situated  between  Covent  Garden  and  Bow  Street,  was 
sacred  to  polite  letters.  There  the  talk  was  abovU 
poetical  justice  and  the  unities  of  place  and  time. 
There  was  a  faction  for  Perrault  and  the  moderns,  a 
faction  for  Boileau  and  the  ancients.  One  group  de- 
bated whether  Paradise  Lost  ouo;ht  not  to  have  been  in 
rhyme.  To  another  an  envious  poetaster  demonstrated 
that  Venice  Preserved  ou<iht  to  have  been  hooted  from 
the  stage.  Under  no  roof  was  a  greater  variety  of  fig- 
ures to  be  seen.  There  were  Earls  in  stars  and  garters, 
clergymen  in  cassocks  and  bands,  pert  Templars,  sheep- 
ish lads  from  the  Universities,  translators  and  index 
makers  in  ra<io;ed  coats  of  frieze.  The  great  press  was 
to  get  near  the  chair  where  John  Dryden  sate.  In  win- 
ter that  chair  was  always  in  the  warmest  nook  by  the 
fire;  in  summer  it  stood  in  the  balcony.  To  bow  to  him, 
and  to  hear  his  opinion  of  Racine's  last  tragedy  or  of 
Bossu's  treatise  on  epic  poetry,  was  thought  a  privilege. 
A  pinch  fi'om  his  snuff  box  was  an  honour  sufiicient  to 
turn  the  head  of  a  young  enthusiast.  There  were 
coffee  houses  where  the  first  medical  men  might  be 
consulted.  Doctor  John  Radcliife,  who,  in  the  year 
1685,  rose  to  the  largest  practice  in  London,  came 
daily,  at  the  hour  when  the  Exchange  was  full,  from 
his  house  in  Bow  Street,  then  a  fashionable  part  of 
the  capital,  to  Garraway's,  and  was  to  be  found,  sur- 
rounded by  surgeons  and  apothecaries,  at  a  particular 
table.  There  were  Puritan  coffee  houses  Avhere  no 
oath  was  heard,  and  where  lankhaired  men  discussed 
election  and  re]>robation  through  their  noses  ;  Jew 
coffee  houses  where  dark  eved  moncv  changers  from 
Venice  and  from  Amsterdam  greeted  each  other ;  and 
Popish  coffee  houses  where,  as  good  Protestants  be* 


406  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

lieved,  Jesuits  planned,  over  their  cups,  another  great 
fire,  and  cast  silver  bullets  to  shoot  the  King.^ 

These  gregarious  habits  had  no  small  share  in  form- 
ing the  character  of  the  Londoner  of  that  ao-e.  He 
was,  indeed,  a  different  being  from  the  rustic  English- 
man. There  was  not  then  the  intercourse  which  now 
exists  between  the  two  classes.  Only  very  great  men 
were  in  the  habit  of  dividing  the  year  between  town 
and  country.  Few  esquires  came  to  the  capital  thrice 
in  their  lives.  Nor  was  it  yet  the  practice  of  all  citizens 
in  easy  circumstances  to  breathe  the  fresh  air  of  the 
fields  and  woods  during  some  weeks  of  every  sunmier. 
A  cockney,  in  a  rural  village,  was  stared  at  as  much  as 
if  he  had  intruded  into  a  Kraal  of  Hottentots.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  the  lord  of  a  Lincolnshire  or  Shrop- 
shire manor  appeared  in  Fleet  Street,  he  was  as  easily 
distinguished  from  the  resident  population  as  a  Turk  or 
a  Lascar.  His  dress,  his  gait,  his  accent,  the  manner 
in  which  he  gazed  at  the  shops,  stumbled  into  the 
gutters,  ran  against  the  porters,  and  stood  under  the 
waterspouts,  marked  him  out  as  an  excellent  subject 
for  the  operations  of  swindlers  and  banterers.  Bul- 
lies jostled  him  into  the  kennel.  Hackney  coachmen 
splashed  him  from  head  to  foot.  Thieves  explored 
with  perfect  security  the  huge  pockets  of  his  horseman's 
coat,  while  he  stood  entranced  by  the  splendour  of  tlie 
Lord  Mayor's  show.  Moneydroppers,  sore  from  the 
cart's  tail,  introduced  themselves  to  him,  and  appeared 

1  Lettres  sur  les  Anslois;  Tom  Brown's  Tour;  Ward's  Loiicloii  Spy; 
The  Character  of  a  Coffee  House,  1673;  Rules  and  Orders  of  the  (-offee 
House,  1674;  Coffee  Houses  vindiented,  1075;  A  Satyr  against  Coffee; 
North's  Examen,  138.;  Life  of  Guildford,  152.;  Life  of  Sir  Dudley  North, 
149.;  Life  of  Dr.  Badcliffe,  puhlished  by  Curll  in  1715.  The  "liveliest 
description  of  Will's  is  in  the  City  and  Country  Mouse.  There  is  a  remark- 
able pasfiage  about  the  influence  of  the  coii'ee  house  orators  in  Haistead's 
Succinct  Genealogies,  printed  in  1085. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  407 

to  him  the  most  honest  friendly  gentlemen  that  he 
had  ever  seen.  Painted  women,  the  refuse  of  Lewkner 
Lane  and  Whetstone  Park,  passed  themselves  on  him 
for  countesses  and  maids  of  honour.  If  he  asked  his 
way  to  Saint  James's,  his  informants  sent  him  to  jNIiie 
End.  If  he  wsnt  into  a  sliop,  he  w^as  instantly  dis- 
cerned to  be  a  fit  purchaser  of  everything  that  nobody 
else  would  buy,  of  secondhand  embroidery,  copper  rings, 
and  watciies  that  would  not  go.  If  he  rambled  into 
any  fashionable  coftee  house,  he  became  a  mark  for  the 
insolent  derision  of  fops  and  the  grave  waggery  of 
Templars.  Enraged  and  mortified,  he  soon  returned 
to  his  mansion,  and  tliere,  in  the  homage  of  his  tenants, 
and  the  conversation  of  his  boon  companions,  found  con- 
solation for  the  vexations  and  humiliations  which  he  had 
undergone.  There  he  once  more  felt  himself  a  great 
man  ;  and  he  saw  nothing  above  him  except  when  at 
the  assizes  he  took  his  seat  on  the  bench  near  the  Judge, 
or  when  at  the  muster  of  the  militia  he  saluted  the  Lord 
Lieutenant. 

The  chief  cause  which  made  the  fusion  of  the  ditl'er- 
ent  elements  of  society  so  imperfect  was  the  Dimcuity  of 
extreme  difficulty  which  our  ancestors  fjund  """^^''"'"s- 
in  passing  from  place  to  place.  Of  all  inventions,  the 
alphabet  and  the  ])rinting  ])ress  alone  excepted,  those 
inventions  which  abrido;e  disttmce  have  done  most  for 
the  civilisati(m  of  our  species.  Every  improvement  of 
the  means  of  locomotion  benefits  mankind  morally  and 
intellectually  as  well  as  materially,  and  not  only  facili- 
tates the  interchange  of  the  various  productions  of  nature 
and  art,  but  tends  to  remove  national  and  provincial 
antipathies,  and  to  bind  together  all  the  branches  of  the 
great  human  family.  In  the  seventeenth  century  the 
inhabitants  of  London  were,  for  almost  every  practical 


408  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

purpose,  farther  from  Reading  than  thej  now  are  from 
Edinburgh,  and  farther  from  Edinburgh  than  they  now 
are  from  Vienna. 

The  subjects  of  Cliarles  the  Second  were  not,  it  is 
true,  quite  unacquainted  with  that  principle  which  has, 
in  our  own  time,  produced  an  unprecedented  revolution 
in  human  affairs,  which  has  enabled  navies  to  advance 
in  the  face  of  wind  and  tide,  and  brigades  of  troops, 
attended  by  all  their  baggage  and  artillery,  to  traverse 
kingdoms  at  a  pace  equal  to  that  of  the  fleetest  race 
horse.  The  Marquess  of  Worcester  had  recently  ob- 
served the  expansive  power  of  moisture  rarefied  by 
heat.  After  many  experiments  he  had  succeeded  in 
constructing  a  rude  steam  engine,  which  he  called  a 
fire  water  work,  and  Avliich  he  pronounced  to  be  an 
admirable  and  most  forcible  instrument  of  propulsion.^ 
But  the  Marquess  was  suspected  to  be  a  madman,  and 
known  to  be  a  Papist.  His  inventions,  therefore,  found 
no  fa\'ourable  recej)tion.  His  fire  water  work  might, 
))erlia])s,  furnish  matter  for  conversation  at  a  meet- 
ing of  tlie  Royal  Society,  but  was  not  applied  to  any 
practical  purpose.  There  were  no  railways,  except 
a  few  made  of  timber,  on  which  coals  were  carried 
from  the  mouths  of  the  Northumbrian  pits  to  the 
banks  of  the  Tyne.^  There  was  very  little  internal 
communication  by  water.  A  few  attempts  had  been 
made  to  deepen  and  embank  the  natural  streams,  but 
with  slender  success.  Hardly  a  single  navigable  canal 
had  been  even  projected.  The  English  of  that  day 
were  in  the  habit  of  talking  Avith  mingled  admiration 
and  despair  of  the  immense  trench  by  which  Lewis  the 
Fourteenth  had  made  a  junction  between  the  Atlantic 
and  the  Mediterranean.     They  little  thought  that  their 

1  Century  of  Inventions,  1003.     No.  68. 

2  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  136. 


Ca.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  409 

country  would,  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations,  be 
intersected,  at  the  cost  of  private  adventurers,  by  arti- 
ficial rivers  making  up  more  than  four  times  the  length 
of  the  Thames,  the  Severn,  and  the  Trent  together. 

It  was  by  the  highways  that  both  travellers  and  goods 
generally  passed  from  place  to  place.  And  Badness  of 
those  highways  appear  to  have  been  far  worse  ^^e  roads. 
than  might  have  been  expected  from  the  degree  of 
wealth  and  civilisation  which  the  nation  had  even  then 
attained.  On  the  best  lines  of  communication  the  ruts 
were  deep,  the  descents  precipitous,  and  the  way  often 
such  as  it  was  hardly  possible  to  distinguish,  in  the 
dusk,  fi-om  the  uninclosed  heath  and  fen  Avhich  lay 
on  both  sides.  Ralph  Thoresby,  the  antiquary,  was 
in  dano;er  of  losino;  his  Avav  on  the  great  North  road, 
between  Barnby  Moor  and  Tuxford,  and  actually  lost 
his  way  between  Doncaster  and  York.^  Pepys  and 
his  wife,  travelling  in  their  own  coach,  lost  their  way 
between  Newbury  and  Reading.  In  the  course  of 
the  same  tour  they  lost  their  way  near  Salisbury,  and 
were  in  danger  of  having  to  pass  the  night  on  the 
])l:un.2  It  was  only  in  fine  weather  that  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  road  was  aA'ailable  for  wheeled  vehicles. 
Often  the  mud  lay  deep  on  the  right  and  the  left ; 
and  only  a  narrow  track  of  firm  jiround  rose  above  the 
(piagmire.-^  At  such  times  obstructions  and  quarrels 
were  frequent,  and  the  path  was  sometimes  blocked  up 
during  a  long  time  by  carriers,  neither  of  whom  would 
break  the  way.  It  happened,  almost  every  day,  that 
coaches  stuck  fast,  until  a  team  of  cattle  could  be  pro- 
cured from  some  neighboin-inij;  farm,  to  tucj  them  out 

1  Thoresby's  Diary.  Oct.  21.  1680,  Aug.  3.  1712. 

2  rej)ys's  Diary,  June  12.  and  16.  1068. 
8  Il)i.l.  Vvh.  28.  1660. 


410  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

of  the  slousli.  But  in  bad  seasons  the  traveller  had  to 
encounter  inconveniences  still  more  serious.  Thoresby, 
who  was  in  the  habit  of  travelling  between  Leeds  and 
the  capital,  has  recorded,  in  his  Diary,  such  a  series  of 
perils  and  disasters  as  might  suffice  for  a  journey  to 
the  Frozen  Ocean  or  to  the  Desert  of  Sahara.  On 
one  occasion  he  learned  that  the  floods  were  out  be- 
tween Ware  and  London,  that  passengers  had  to  swim 
for  their  lives,  and  that  a  higgler  had  perished  in  the 
attempt  to  cross.  In  consequence  of  these  tidings  he 
turned  out  of  the  high  road,  and  was  conducted  across 
some  meadows,  where  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  ride 
to  the  saddle  skirts  in  water.^  In  the  course  of  an- 
other journey  he  narrowly  escaped  being  swe])t  away 
by  an  inundation  of  the  Trent.  He  was  afterwards 
detained  at  Stamford  four  days,  on  account  of  the  state 
of  the  roads,  and  then  ventured  to  proceed  only  because 
fourteen  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  who  were 
going  up  in  a  body  to  Parliament  Avith  guides  and  nu- 
merous attendants,  took  him  into  their  company.^  On 
the  roads  of  Derbyshire  travellers  Avere  in  constant 
fear  for  their  necks,  and  were  frequently  compelled  to 
alieht  and  lead  their  beasts.^  The  great  route  through 
Wales  to  Holyhead  Avas  in  such  a  state  that,  in  1685,  a 
viceroy,  going  to  Ireland,  Avas  five  hours  in  travelling 
fourteen  miles,  from  Saint  Asaph  to  Conway.  BetAveen 
CouAvay  and  Beaumaris  he  was  forced  to  Avalk  great 
pai't  of  the  way  ;  and  his  lady  Avas  carried  in  a  litter. 
His  coach  Avas,  Avith  much  difficulty,  and  by  the  help  of 
many  hands,  brought  after  him   entire.     In  general, 


1  Thoresby's  Diary,  May  17.  1695. 

2  Ibid.  Dec.  27.  1708. 

u  Tour  in  Derbyshire,  by  J.  Browne,  son  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  1662 
Cotton's  Angler,  1076. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  411 

carriages  were  taken  to  pieces  at  Conway,  and  borne, 
on  the  shoulders  of  stout  Welsh  peasants,  to  the  Menai 
Straits.i  In  some  parts  of  Kent  and  Sussex  none  but 
the  strongest  horses  could,  in  winter,  get  through  the 
bog,  in  which,  at  everj  step,  they  sank  deep.  The 
markets  were  often  inaccessible  during  several  months. 
It  is  said  that  the  fruits  of  the  earth  were  sometimes 
Buffered  to  rot  in  one  place,  while  in  another  place,  dis- 
tant only  a  few  miles,  the  supjjly  fell  far  short  of  the 
demand.  The  wheeled  carriages  were,  in  this  district, 
generally  pulled  by  oxen.^  When  Prince  George  of 
Denmark  visited  the  stately  mansion  of  Pet  worth  in 
wet  weather,  he  was  six  hours  in  going  nine  miles  : 
and  it  was  necessary  that  a  body  of  sturdy  hinds  should 
be  on  each  side  of  his  coach,  in  order  to  prop  it.  Of 
the  carriages  which  conveyed  his  retinue  several  were 
ui)set  and  injured.  A  letter  from  one  of  the  party  has 
been  preserved,  in  which  the  unfortunate  courtier  com- 
l)]ains  that,  during  fourteen  hours,  he  never  once 
alighted,  except  when  his  coach  w^as  overturned  or 
stuck  fast  in  the  mud.^ 

One  chief  cause  of  the  badness  of  the  roads  seems  t,o 
have  been  the  defective  state  of  the  law.  Every  parish 
was  bound  to  repair  the  highways  which  .passed  through 
it.  The  peasantry  were  forced  to  give  their  gratuitous 
labour  six  days  in  the  year.  If  this  was  not  sufficient, 
hired  labour  was  employed,  and  the  expense  was  met 
by  a  parochial  rate.  That  a  route  coiniecting  two  great 
towns,  which  have  a  large  and  thriving  trade  with  each 
other,  should  be   maintained  at  the  cost  of  the  rural 

1  Correspondence  of  Henry  Earl  of  Clarendon,  Dec.  30.  1685,  Jan.  1. 
IB86. 

2  I'ostletlnvaifi-'s  Diet.,  Roads.     History  of  Ilawkliurst,  in  the  IJibliotheca 
Topographica  I'.ritannica. 

'  Annals  of  Queen  Anne,  1703.     Appendix,  No.  3. 


412  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  LCh.  UL 

population  scattered  between  them  is  obviously  unjust ; 
and  this  injustice  was  peculiarly  glaring  in  the  case  of 
the  great  North  road,  which  traversed  very  poor  and 
thinly  inhabited  districts,  and  joined  very  rich  and  pop- 
ulous districts.  Indeed  it  was  not  in  the  power  of  the 
parishes  of  Huntingdonshire  to  mend  a  highway  worn 
by  the  constant  traffic  between  the  West  Riding  of 
Yorkshire  and  London.  Soon  after  the  Restoration 
this  grievance  attracted  the  notice  of  Parliament ;  and 
an  act,  the  first  of  our  many  turnpike  acts,  was  passed, 
imposing  a  small  toll  on  travellers  and  goods,  for  the 
purpose  of  keeping  some  parts  of  this  important  line 
of  communication  in  good  repair.^  This  innovation, 
however,  excited  many  murmurs  ;  and  the  other  great 
avenues  to  the  capital  were  long  left  under  the  old  sys- 
tem. A  change  was  at  length  effected,  but  not  with- 
out much  difficulty.  For  unjust  and  absurd  taxation  to 
which  men  are  accustomed  is  often  borne  far  more  will- 
ingly than  the  most  reasonable  imj^ost  which  is  new. 
It  was  not  till  many  toll  bars  had  been  violently  pulled 
down,  till  the  troops  had  in  many  districts  been  forced 
to  act  against  the  people,  and  till  much  blood  had  been 
shed,  that  a  good  system  was  introduced.^  By  slow 
degrees  reason  triumphed  over  prejudice  ;  and  our  isl- 
and is  now  crossed  in  every  direction  by  near  thirty 
thousand  miles  of  turnpike  road. 

On  the  best  highways  heavy  articles  were,  in  the 
time  of  Charles  the  Second,  generally  conveyed  from 
place  to  place  by  stage  waggons.  In  the  straw  of 
these  vehicles  nestled    a    crowd    of  passengers,    who 

1  15  Car.  TI.  c.  1. 

2  The  evils  of  the  old  system  are  strikingly  set  forth  in  many  petitions 
which  appear  in  the  Commons'  Journal  of  172|.  How  fierce  an  opposition 
was  offered  to  the  new  system  may  be  learned  from  the  Gentleman's  M:ig- 
azine  of  1749. 


II 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  413 

could  not  afford  to  travel  by  coach  or  on  horse- 
back, and  who  were  prevented  by  infirmity,  or  by  the 
weight  of  their  luggage,  from  going  on  foot.  The  ex- 
pense of  transmitting  heavy  goods  in  this  way  was 
enormous.  From  London  to  Birminoham  tlie  charo;e 
was  seven  pounds  a  ton ;  from  London  to  Exeter 
twelve  pounds  a  ton.'  This  was  about  fifteen  pence 
a  ton  for  every  mile,  more  by  a  third  than  was  after- 
wards charged  on  turnpike  roads,  and  fifteen  times 
what  is  now  demanded  by  railway  companies.  The 
cost  of  conveyance  amounted  to  a  prohibitory  tax  on 
many  useful  articles.  Coal  in  particular  was  never 
seen  except  in  the  districts  where  it  was  produced,  or 
in  the  districts  to  which  it  could  be  carried  by  sea,  and 
was  indeed  always  known  in  the  south  of  England  by 
the  name  of  sea  coal. 

On  byroads,  and  generally  throughout  the  country 
north  of  York  and  west  of  Exeter,  goods  were  carried 
by  long  trains  of  packhorses.  These  strong  and  pa- 
tient beasts,  the  breed  of  which  is  now  extinct,  were 
attended  by  a  class  of  men  who  seem  to  have  borne 
much  resemblance  to  the  Spanish  muleteers.  A  trav- 
eller of  humble  condition  often  foinid  it  convenient  to 
perform  a  journey  mounted  on  a  packsaddle  between 
two  baskets,  imder  the  care  of  these  hardy  guides. 
The  expense  of  this  mode  of  conveyance  was  small. 
But  the  caravan  moved  at  a  foot's  pace ;  and  in  winter 
the  cold  was  often  insupportable.^ 

The  rich  commonly  travelled  in  their  own  carriages, 
with  at  least  four  horses.  Cotton,  the  facetious  poet, 
attemi)ted  to  go  from  London  to  the  Peak  with  a  single 

1  Postlethwaite's  Diet.,  Roads. 

'  Loidis  and  Klmete.     Mai-:»liair9  Rural  Economy  of  England.     In  1739 
Boderic  Random  came  from  Scotland  to  Newcastle  on  a  packhorse. 


414  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 

pair,  but  found  at  Saint  Albans  that  the  journey  would 
be  insupportably  tedious,  and  altered  his  plan.^  A 
coach  and  six  is  in  our  time  never  seen,  except  as  part 
of  some  pageant.  The  frequent  mention  therefore  of 
such  equipages  in  old  books  is  likely  to  mislead  us. 
We  attribute  to  magnificence  what  was  really  the  ef- 
feet  of  a  very  disagreeable  necessity.  People,  in  the 
time  of  Charles  the  Second,  travelled  with  six  horses, 
because  with  a  smaller  number  there  was  great  dan- 
ger of  sticking  fast  in  the  mire.  Nor  were  even  six 
horses  always  sufficient.  Vanbruoh,  in  the  succeedino: 
generation,  described  with  great  humour  the  way  in 
which  a  country  gentleman,  newly  chosen  a  member 
of  Parliament,  went  up  to  London.  On  that  occasion 
all  the  exertions  of  six  beasts,  two  of  which  had  been 
taken  from  the  plough,  could  not  save  the  family  coach 
from  being  imbedded  in  a  quagmire. 

Public  carriages  had  recently  been  much  improved. 
stage  During  the  years  which  immediately  followed 

coaches.  ^]jg  Restoration,  a  diligence  ran  between  Lon- 
don and  Oxford  in  two  days.  The  passengers  slept  at 
Beaconsfield.  At  length,  in  the  spring  of  1669,  a  great 
and  daring  innovation  was  attempted.  It  Avas  an- 
nounced that  a  vehicle,  described  as  the  Flying  Coach, 
would  perform  the  whole  journey  between  sunrise  and 
sunset.  This  spirited  undertaking  was  solemnly  con- 
sidered and  sanctioned  by  the  Heads  of  the  University, 
and  appears  to  have  excited  the  same  sort  of  interest 
which  is  excited  in  our  own  time  by  the  opening  of  a 
new  railway.  The  Vicechancellor,  by  a  notice  affixed 
in  all  public  places,  prescribed  the  hour  and  ])lace  of  de- 
parture. The  success  of  the  experiment  was  complete. 
At  six  in  the  moiming  the  carriage  began  to  move  from 

1  Cotton's  Epistle  to  J.  Bradshaw. 


Cm.  III.]  STATE    OF   ENGLAND    IN    1(385.  415 

before  the  ancient  front  of  All  Souls  College  :  and  at 
seven  in  the  evenino;  the  adventurous  gentlenien  who 
had  run  the  first  risk  were  safely  deposited  at  their  inn 
in  London.^  The  emulation  of  the  sister  University 
was  moved ;  and  soon  a  diligence  was  set  up  which  in 
one  day  carried  passengers  from  Cambridge  to  the 
capitiil.  At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Sec- 
ond, flying  carriages  ran  thrice  a  week  from  London  to 
the  ciiief  towns.  But  no  stage  coach,  indeed  no  stage 
waggon,  appears  to  have  proceeded  further  north  than 
York,  or  further  west  than  Exeter.  The  ordinary 
day's  journey  of  a  flying  coach  was  about  fifty  miles 
m  the  summer ;  but  in  winter,  when  the  ways  were 
bad  and  the  nights  long,  little  more  than  thirty.  The 
Chester  coach,  the  York  coach,  and  the  Exeter  coach 
generally  reached  London  in  four  days  during  the 
fine  season,  but  at  Chi'istmas  not  till  the  sixth  day. 
The  passengers,  six  in  number,  were  all  seated  in  the 
carriage.  For  accidents  were  so  frequent  that  it  would 
liave  been  most  perilous  to  mount  the  roof.  The  ordi- 
nary fare  was  about  twopence  halfpenny  a  mile  in  sum- 
mer, and  somewhat  more  in  winter.^ 

Tins  mode  of  travelling,  which  by  Englishmen  of 
the  ])resent  day  would  be  regarded  as  insuflerably 
slow,  seemed  to  our  ancestors  Avonderfully  and  indeed 
alarmingl}^  rapid,  hi  a  work  jjublished  a  few  montlis 
before  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second,  the  flying 
coaches  are  extolled  as  far  superior  tc  any  similar  vehi- 
cles ever  known  in  the  world.  Their  velocity  is  the 
subject  of  special  commendation,  and  is  triumj)}  antly 
contrasted   with   the   sluggish   pace  of  the  continental 

1  Anthony  ii  Wood's  Life  of  himself. 

2  Chamborlayne's  State  of  Kn^lantl,  1034.  See  also  the  list  of  stage 
coaches  and  waggons  at  the  end  of  the  book,  entitled  Angliiu  Metropolis, 
1690. 


416  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

posts.  But  with  boasts  like  these  was  mingled  the 
sound  of  complaint  and  invective.  The  interests  of 
lar£i;e  classes  had  been  unfavourably  atiected  by  the 
establishment  of  the  new  diligences ;  and,  as  usual, 
many  persons  were,  from  mere  stupidity  and  obsti- 
nacy, disposed  to  clamour  against  the  innovation, 
simj)ly  because  it  was  an  innovation.  It  was  vehe- 
mently argued  that  this  mode  of  conveyance  would 
be  fatal  to  the  breed  of  horses  and  to  the  noble  art 
of  horsemanship ;  that  the  Thames,  which  had  long 
been  an  important  nursery  of  seamen,  would  cease  to 
be  the  chief  thoroughfare  from  London  up  to  Windsor 
and  down  to  Gravesend  ;  that  saddlers  and  spurriers 
Avould  be  ruined  by  hundreds  ;  that  numerous  inns,  at 
which  mounted  travellers  had  been  in  the  habit  of  stop- 
ping, would  be  deserted,  and  would  no  longer  pay  any 
rent ;  that  the  new  carriages  were  too  hot  in  summer 
and  too  cold  in  winter ;  that  the  passengers  were  griev- 
ously annoyed  by  invalids  and  crying  children  ;  that 
the  coach  sometimes  reached  the  inn  so  late  that  it  was 
impossible  to  get  supper,  and  sometimes  started  so 
early  that  it  was  impossible  to  get  breakfast.  On  these 
grounds  it  was  gravely  recommended  tiiat  no  public 
carriage  should  be  permitted  to  have  more  than  four 
horses,  to  start  oftener  than  once  a  week,  or  to  go  more 
than  thirty  miles  a  day.  It  was  hoped  that,  if  this 
regulation  were  adopted,  all  except  the  sick  and  the 
lame  would  return  to  the  old  mode  of  travelUng.  Pe- 
titions embodying  such  opinions  as  these  were  presented 
to  the  king  in  council  from  several  companies  cf  the 
City  of  London,  from  several  provincial  towns,  and 
from  the  justices  of  several  counties.  We  smile  at 
these  things.  It  is  not  impossible  that  our  descend- 
ants,  when   they  read   the    history  of  the    opposition 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  417 

offered  by  cupidity  and  prejudice  to  the  improvements 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  may  smile  in  their  turn.^ 

In  spite  of  the  attractions  of  the  flying  coaches,  it 
was  still  usual  for  men  who  enjoyed  health  and  vigour, 
and  who  were  not  encumbered  by  much  baooaoe,  to 
perform  long  journeys  on  horseback.  If  the  traveller 
wished  to  move  expeditiously  he  rode  post.  Fresh 
saddle  horses  and  guides  were  to  be.  procvu*ed  at  con- 
venient distances  alono;  all  the  ereat  lines  of  road.  The 
charge  was  threepence  a  mile  for  each  horse,  and  four- 
pence  a  stage  for  the  guide.  In  this  manner,  when  the 
ways  were  good,  it  was  possible  to  travel,  for  a  consid- 
erable time,  as  rapidly  as  by  any  conveyance  known  in 
England,  till  vehicles  were  propelled  by  steam.  There 
were  as  yet  no  post  chaises  ;  nor  could  those  who  rode 
in  their  own  coaches  ordinarily  procure  a  change  of 
horses.  The  King,  liowever,  and  the  great  officers  of 
state  were  able  to  command  relays.  Thus  Chai'les 
commonly  Avent  in  one  day  from  Whiteliall  to  New- 
market, a  distance  of  about  fifty-five  miles  through  a 
level  country  ;  and  this  was  thought  by  his  subjects  a 
])roof  of  great  activity.  Evelyn  performed  the  same 
journey  in  company  with  the  Lord  Treasurer  Clifford. 
The  coach  was  drawn  by  six  horses,  which  were 
changed  at  Bishop  Stortford  and  again  at  Chesterford. 
The  travellers  reached  Newmarket  at  night.  Such  a 
mode  of  conveyance  seems  to  have  been  considered  as 
a  rare  luxury  confined  to  princes  and  nn'nisters.^ 

Whatever  might  be  the  way  in  which  a  journey  was 

J-  John  Cresset's  Reasons  for  suppressing  Staije  Coaches,  1672.  These 
reasons  were  afterwards  inscrtccl  in  a  tract,  entitled  "  The  Grand  Concern 
of  Kngtand  explained,  IfJT^."  Cresset's  attack  on  stage  coaches  called 
forth  some  answers  which  I  have  consiiltcil. 

'^  Chamberlayne's  State  of  Kngland,  1084.  North's  Examen,  105.  Eve- 
lyn's Diary,  Oct.  9,  10.  1G71. 

VOL.   I.  27 


418  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill, 

performed,  the  travellers,  unless  they  were  numerous 
Uii^hway-  ^^^^  ^^^^^^  armed,  ran  considerable  risk  of 
'"''°-  being  stopped  and  plundered.     The  mounted 

highwayman,  a  marauder  known  to  our  generation 
only  from  books,  was  to  be  found  on  every  main  road. 
The  waste  tracts  which  lay  on  the  great  routes  near 
London  were  especially  haunted  by  plunderers  of  this 
class.  Hounslow  Heath,  on  the  great  Western  Koad, 
and  Finchley  Common,  on  the  great  Northern  Road, 
were  perhaps  the  most  celebrated  of  these  spots.  The 
Cambridge  scholars  trembled  when  they  approached 
Epping  Forest,  even  in  broad  daylight.  Seamen  who 
had  just  been  paid  off  at  Chatham  were  often  compelled 
to  deliver  their  purses  on  Gadshill,  celebrated  near  a 
hundred  years  earlier  by  the  greatest  of  poets  as  the 
scene  of  the  depredations  of  Falstaff.  The  public 
authorities  seem  to  have  been  often  at  a  loss  how  to 
deal  with  the  ])lnnderers.  At  one  time  it  was  an- 
nounced in  the  Gazette  that  several  persons,  who  were 
strongly  suspected  of  being  highwaymen,  but  against 
whom  there  w^as  not  sufficient  evidence,  would  be 
paraded  at  Newgate  in  riding  dresses :  their  horses 
would  also  be  shown  :  and  all  gentlemen  who  had  been 
robbed  were  invited  to  insnect  this  singular  exhibition. 
On  another  occasion  a  pardon  was  publicly  offered  to 
a  robber  if  he  would  give  up  some  rough  diamonds,  of 
immense  value,  which  he  had  taken  when  he  stopped 
the  Harwich  mail.  A  short  time  after  appeared  an- 
other proclamation,  warning  the  innkeepers  that  the 
eye  of  the  government  was  upon  them.  Their  crim- 
inal connivance,  it  was  affirmed,  enabled  banditti  to 
infest  the  roads  with  impunity.  That  these  suspicions 
were  not  without  foundation,  is  proved  by  the  dying 
speeches  of  some   penitent  robbers  of  that  age,  who 


i 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OF    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  419 

ap])car  to  have  received  from  the  innkeepers  services 
much  resembhng  those  which  Farquhar's  Bonifiice 
rendered  to  Gibbet.^ 

It  was  necessary  to  the  success  and  even  to  the 
•afety  of  the  highwayman  that  he  should  be  a  bold  and 
'kilful  rider,  and  that  his  manners  and  appearance 
should  be  such  as  suited  the  master  of  a  fine  horse. 
He  therefore  held  an  aristocratical  position  in  the  com- 
munity of  thieves,  appeared  at  fashionable  coffee  liouses 
and  gaming  houses,  and  betted  with  men  of  quality  on 
the  race  ground.^  Sometimes,  indeed,  he  was  a  man 
of  good  family  and  education.  A  romantic  interest 
therefore  attached,  and  perhaps  still  attaches,  to  the 
names  of  freebooters  of  this  class.  The  vulgar  eagerly 
drank  in  tales  of  their  ferocity  and  audacity,  of  their 
occasional  acts  of  generosity  and  good  nature,  of  their 
amoiu's,  of  their  miraculous  escapes,  of  their  desperate 
struggles,  and  of  their  manly  bearing  at  the  bar  and  in 
the  cart.  Thus  it  was  related  of  William  Nevison,  the 
great  robber  of  Yorkshire,  that  he  levied  a  quarterly 
tribute  on  all  the  northern  drovers,  and,  in  return,  not 
only  spared  them  himself,  but  protected  them  against 
all  other  thieves  ;  that  he  demanded  purses  in  the  most 
courteous  manner ;  that  he  gave  largely  to  the  poor 
what  he  had  taken  from  the  rich ;  that  his  life  was 
once  spared  by  the  royal  clemency,  but  that  he  again 
tempted  his  fate,  and  at  length  died,  in  1G85,  on  the 
gnllows  of  York.'^     It  was  related  how  Claude  Duval, 

1  See  the  London  Gazette,  May  U.  1G77,  August  4.  1687,  Dec.  5.  JR87. 
'I  he  last  confi;ssion  of  Aui^nstin  Kins,  who  was  the  son  of  an  eniinont 
iHviiip,  and  had  been  educated  at  Cambridge,  but  was  hanged  at  Colches- 
ter in  March  1C88,  is  highly  curious. 

2  AimrrtU.     Pray  sir,  lian't  I  seen  your  face  at  Will's  coffeehouse? 
Oi/>btt.     Yes,  sir.  and  at  White's  too.  —  Hoaux'  Stratagem. 

*  (k'nt's  History  of  York.  Atiothrr  marauder  of  tlie  same  description, 
named   Biss,  was  hango()  at  Salisbury  in  1G115.     In  a  ballad  which  is  in  tht 


420  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

the  French  page  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  took  to  the 
road,  became  captain  of  a  formidable  gang,  and  had  tlie 
honour  to  be  named  first  in  a  royal  proclamation  against 
notorious  offenders ;  how  at  the  head  of  his  troop  he 
stopped  a  lady's  coach,  in  which  there  was  a  booty  of 
four  hundred  pounds  ;  how  he  took  only  one  hundred, 
and  suffered  the  fair  owner  to  ransom  the  rest  by 
dancing  a  coranto  with  him  on  the  heath  ;  how  his 
vivacious  gallantry  stole  away  the  hearts  of  all  women  ; 
how  his  dexterity  at  sword  and  pistol  made  him  a  ter- 
I'or  to  all  men  ;  how,  at  length,  in  the  year  1670,  he 
was  seized  when  overcome  by  wine  ;  how  dames  of 
high  rank  visited  him  in  prison,  and  with  tears  inter- 
ceded for  his  life  ;  how  the  King  would  have  granted  a 
pardon,  but  for  the  interference  of  Judge  Morton,  the 
terror  of  highwaymen,  who  threatened  to  resign  his 
office  unless  the  law  were  carried  into  full  effect ;  and 
how,  after  the  execution,  the  corpse  lay  in  state  with 
all  the  pomp  of  scutcheons,  wax  lights,  black  hangings 
and  mutes,  till  the  same  cruel  Judge,  who  had  inter- 
cepted the  mercy  of  the  crown,  sent  officers  to  disturb 
the  obsequies.^  In  these  anecdotes  there  is  doubtless 
a  large  mixture  of  fable  ;  but  they  are  not  on  that  ac- 
count unworthy  of  being  recorded  ;  for  it  is  both  an  au- 
thentic and  an  important  fact  that  such  tales,  whether 
false  or  true,  were  heard  by  our  ancestors  with  eager- 
ness and  faith. 

All  the  various  dangers  by  which  the  traveller  was 
beset   were   greatly  increased  by  darkness.      He   was 

I'epysian  Library,  he  is  represented  as  defending  himself  thus  before  the 
.]  udge : 

"  What  say  you  now,  my  honoured  Lord, 

What  harm  was  there  in  this  ? 

Rich,  wealthy  misers  were  abhorred 

By  brave,  freehearted  Biss." 

Pope's  Memoirs  of  Duval,  published  immediately  after  the  execution 
Oates's  EIkuv  ^aaiXiKT/,  Part  I. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP  ENGLAND   IN   1685.  421 

therefore  commonly  desirous  of  having  the  shelter  of  a 
roof  durino;  the  night ;  and  such  shelter  it  was 

Inns* 

not  difficult  to  obtain.  From  a  very  early  pe- 
riod the  inns  of  Enc;land  had  been  renowned.  Our  fii'st 
great  poet  had  described  the  excellent  accommodation 
which  tliey  afforded  to  the  pilgrims  of  the  fourteenth 
century.  Nine  and  twenty  pei'sons,  with  their  horses, 
found  room  in  the  wide  chambers  and  stables  of  the 
Tabard  in  Southwark.  The  food  was  of  the  best,  and 
the  wines  such  as  di'ew  the  company  on  to  drink  largely. 
Two  hundred  years  later,  under  the  reimi  of  Elizabeth, 
William  Harrison  gave  a  lively  description  of  the  plenty 
and  comfort  of  the  great  hostelries.  The  Continent  of 
Europe,  he  said,  could  show  nothing  like  them.  There 
were  some  in  which  two  or  three  hundred  people,  with 
their  horses,  could  without  difficulty  be  lodged  and  fed. 
The  bedding,  the  tapestry,  above  all,  the  abundance  of 
clean  and  fine  linen  was  matter  of  wonder.  Valuable 
plate  was  often  set  on  the  tables.  Nay,  there  were  signs 
which  had  cost  thirty  or  forty  pounds.  In  the  scA-en- 
teenth  centuiy  England  abounded  with  excellent  inns 
of  every  rank.  The  traveller  sometimes,  in  a  small 
village,  lighted  on  a  public  house  such  as  Walton  has 
described,  where  the  brick  floor  was  swept  clean,  where 
the  walls  were  stuck  round  with  ballads,  where  the 
sheets  smelt  of  lavender,  and  where  a  blazing  fire,  a 
cup  of  good  ale,  and  a  dish  of  trouts  fresh  from  the 
neighbouring  brook,  were  to  be  procured  at  small 
charo-e.  At  the  laricer  houses  of  entertainment  were 
to  be  found  beds  hung  with  silk,  choice  cookery,  and 
claret  equal  to  the  best  which  was  drunk  in  London.^ 

1  Sec  the  prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales,  Harrison's  Historical  De- 
scription of  the  Islimd  of  Great  Britain,  and  I'ejn's's  account  of  liis  tour  in 
the  summer  of  1GG8.  The  excellence  of  the  English  inns  is  noticed  in  the 
Travels  of  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo. 


422  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  LCh.  III. 

The  innkeepers  too,  it  was  said,  Avere  not  like  other 
innkeepers.  On  tlie  Continent  the  liuidlord  was  tlie 
tyrant  of  those  who  crossed  the  threshokl.  In  England 
he  was  a  servant.  Never  was  an  Enghshman  more  at 
home  than  when  he  took  his  ease  in  his  inn.  Even 
men  of"  fortune,  who  might  in  their  own  mansions  have 
enjoyed  every  luxury,  were  often  in  the  habit  of  pass- 
ing their  evenings  in  the  parlour  of  some  neighbouring 
house  of  public  entertainment.  They  seem  to  have 
thought  that  comfort  and  freedom  could  in  no  other 
place  be  enjoyed  in  equal  perfection.  This  feeling  con- 
tinued during  many  generations  to  be  a  national  pecu- 
liarity. The  liberty  and  jollity  of  inns  long  furnished 
matter  to  our  novelists  and  dramatists.  Johnson  de- 
clared that  a  tavern  chair  was  the  throne  of  human 
felicity ;  and  Shenstone  gently  complained  that  no  pri- 
vate roof,  however  friendly,  gave  the  wanderer  so  warm 
a  welcome  as  that  which  was  to  be  found  at  an  inn. 

Many  conveniences,  which  were  unknown  at  Hamp- 
ton Court  and  Whitehall  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
are  to  be  found  in  our  modern  hotels.  Yet  on  the 
whole  it  is  certain  that  the  improvement  of  our  houses 
of  public  entertainment  has  by  no  means  kept  pace  with 
the  improvement  of  our  roads  and  of  our  conveyances. 
Nor  is  this  strange  ;  for  it  is  evident  that,  all  other  cir- 
cumstances being  supposed  equal,  the  inns  will  be  best 
where  the  means  of  locomotion  are  worst.  The  quicker 
the  rate  of  travelling,  the  less  important  is  it  that  there 
should  be  numerous  agreeable  resting  places  for  the 
traveller.  A  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago  a  person 
who  came  up  to  the  capital  from  a  remote  county  gen- 
erally required,  by  the  way,  twelve  or  fifteen  meals,  and 
lodging  for  five  or  six  nights.  If  he  were  a  great  man, 
he  expected  the  meals  and  lodging  to  be  comfoi-table, 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  423 

ai)(J  even  luxurious.  At  present  we  fly  from  York  or 
Exeter  to  London  by  the  light  of  a  single  winter's  day. 
At  present,  therefore,  a  traveller  seldom  interrupts  his 
journey  merely  for  the  sake  of  rest  and  refreshment. 
The  consequence  is  that  hundreds  of  excellent  inns  have 
fallen  into  utter  decay.  In  a  short  time  no  good  houses 
of  that  description  will  be  found,  except  at  places 
where  strangers  are  likely  to  be  detained  by  business 
or  pleasure. 

The  mode  in  which  correspondence  was  carried  on 
between  distant  places  may  excite  the  scorn 

^  .  "■  .  Post  office. 

of  the  present  generation  ;  yet  it  was  such  as 
might  have  moved  the  admiration  and  envy  of  the  pol- 
ished nations  of  antiquity,  or  of  the  contemporaries  of 
Raleigh  and  Cecil.  A  rude  and  imperfect  establish- 
ment of  posts  for  the  conveyance  of  letters  had  been  set 
up  by  Charles  the  First,  and  had  been  swept  away  by 
the  civil  war.  Under  the  Commonwealth  the  design 
was  resumed.  At  the  Restoration  the  proceeds  of  the 
Post  Office,  after  all  expenses  had  been  ]\aid,  were 
settled  on  the  Duke  of  York.  On  most  lines  of  road  the 
mails  went  out  and  came  in  only  on  the  alternate  days. 
In  Cornwall,  in  the  fens  of  Lincolnshire,  and  among 
the  hills  and  lakes  of  Cumberland,  letters  were  received 
onlv  once  a  week.  During;  a  roval  progress  a  dailv 
post  was  despatched  from  the  capital  to  the  place  where 
the  court  sojourned.  There  was  also  daily  communi- 
cation between  London  and  the  Downs  ;  and  the  same 
privilege  was  sometimes  extended  to  Tunbridge  Wells 
and  Bath  at  the  seasons  when  those  places  were  crowded 
by  the  sreat.  The  bao-s  were  carried  on  horseback 
day  and  night  at  the  rate  of  about  five  miles  an  hoiu*.' 

1  Stat.  12  Car.  H.  c.  35.     Chambeilayne's  State  of  England,  1G84.     An- 
glioE  Metropolis,  liiDO.     London  Gazette,  June  22.  1G85,  August  15.  1G87. 


424  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

The  ]-evenue  of  this  establishment  was  not  derived 
solely  from  the  charge  for  the  transmission  of  letters. 
The  post  office  alone  was  entitled  to  furnish  post  horses  ; 
and,  from  the  care  with  which  this  monopoly  was 
guarded,  we  may  infer  that  it  was  found  profitable.^  If, 
indeed,  a  traveller  had  waited  half  an  hour  without  be- 
ing supplied,  he  might  hire  a  horse  wherever  he  could. 

To  facilitate  coiTespondence  between  one  part  of 
London  and  another  was  not  originally  one  of  the  ob- 
jects of  the  Post  Office.  But,  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second,  an  enterprising  citizen  of  London,  William 
Dockwray,  set  up,  at  great  expense,  a  penny  post, 
which  delivered  letters  and  parcels  six  or  eight  times 
a  day  in  the  busy  and  crowded  streets  near  the  Ex- 
change, and  four  times  a  day  in  the  outskirts  of  the 
capital.  This  improvement  was,  as  usual,  strenuously 
resisted.  The  porters  complained  that  their  interests 
were  attacked,  and  tore  down  the  placards  in  which  the 
scheme  was  announced  to  the  public.  The  excitement 
caused  by  Godfrey's  death,  and  by  the  discovery  of 
Coleman's  papers,  was  then  at  the  height.  A  cry  was 
therefore  raised  that  the  penny  post  was  a  Popish  con- 
trivance. The  great  Doctor  Gates,  it  was  affirmed,  had 
hinted  a  suspicion  that  the  Jesuits  were  at  the  bottom 
of  the  scheme,  and  that  the  bags,  if  examined,  would  be 
found  full  of  treason.^  The  utility  of  the  enterprise 
was,  however,  so  great  and  obvious  that  all  opposition 
proved  fruitless.  As  soon  as  it  became  clear  that  the 
speculation  would  be  lucrative,  the  Duke  of  York  com- 
plained of  it  as  an  infraction  of  his  monopoly,  and  the 
courts  of  law  decided  in  his  favour.^ 

1  London  Gazette,  Sept.  14.  1685. 

2  Smith's  Current  Intelligence,  March  30.  and  April  3.  1680. 
«  Anglise  Metropolis,  1690. 


Ch.  Ill  ]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  426 

The  rev^emie  of  tlie  Post  Office  was  from  the  first 
constantly  increasing.  In  the  year  of  tlie  Restoration  a 
committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  after  strict  in- 
quiry, had  estimated  the  net  receipt  at  about  twenty 
thousand  pounds.  At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second,  the  net  receipt  was  little  short  of  fifty  thou- 
sand pounds  ;  and  this  was  then  thought  a  stupendous 
sum.  The  gross  receipt  was  about  seventy  thousand 
poimds.  The  charge  for  conveying  a  single  letter  Avas 
twopence  for  eighty  miles,  and  threepence  for  a  longer 
distance.  The  postage  increased  in  proportion  to  the 
weight  of  the  packet.^  At  present  a  single  letter  is 
carried  to  the  extremity  of  Scotland  or  of  Ireland  for  a 
penny ;  and  the  monopoly  of  post  horses  has  long  ceased 
to  exist.  Yet  the  gross  annvial  receipts  of  the  depart- 
ment amount  to  more  than  eighteen  hundred  thousand 
pounds,  and  the  net  receipts  to  more  than  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds.  It  is,  therefore,  scarcely  pos- 
sible to  doubt  that  the  number  of  letters  now  con- 
veyed by  mail  is  seventy  times  the  number  which  was 
so  conveyed  at  the  time  of  the  accession  of  James  the 
Second. 

No  part  of  the  load  which  tlie  old  mails  carried  out 
was  more  important  than  the  newsletters.  In 
1685  )u»thing  like  the  London  daily  paper  of 
om'  time  existed,  or  could  exist.  Neither  the  necessary 
capital  nor  the  necessary  skill  was  to  be  found.  Free- 
dom  too  was  wanting,  a  want  as  fatal  as  that  of  either 
capital  or  skill.  The  press  was  not  indeed  at  that  mo- 
ment under  a  general  censorship.  The  licensing  act, 
which  had  been  passed  soon  after  the  Restoration,  had 
ex])ired  in  1679.      Any  person  might  therefore  print, 

*  Commons'  Journals,  Sept.  4. 1G60,  March  1. 1G8S.    Chamberlayne,  1684. 
Davenant  on  thu  Public  Revenue,  Discourse  IV. 


426  HISTOKY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  HI. 

at  his  own  risk,  a  history,  a  sermon,  or  a  poem,  witliout 
the  previous  approbation  of  any  public  officer;  but  tlie 
Judges  were  unanimously  of  opinion  that  this  liberty 
did  not  extend  to  Gazettes,  and  that,  by  the  common 
law  of  England,  no  man,  not  authorised  by  the  crown, 
had  a  right  to  publish  political  news.^  While  the  Whig 
party  was  still  formidable,  the  government  thought  it 
ex})edient  occasionally  to  connive  at  the  violation  of  this 
rule.  During  the  great  battle  of  the  Exclusion  Bill, 
many  newspapers  were  suffered  to  appear,  the  Protes- 
tant Intelligence,  the  Current  Intelligence,  the  Domes- 
tic Intelligence,  the  True  News,  the  London  Mei'cury.^ 
None  of  these  was  published  oftener  than  twice  a  week. 
None  exceeded  in  size  a  single  small  leaf.  The  quan- 
tity of  matter  which  one  of  them  contained  in  a  year 
was  not  more  than  is  often  found  in  two  numbers  of  the 
Times.  After  the  defeat  of  the  Whig-s  it  was  no  lono;er 
necessary  for  the  King  to  be  sparing  in  the  use  of  that 
which  all  his  Judges  had  pronounced  to  be  his  un- 
doubted prerogative.  At  the  close  of  his  reign  no 
newspaper  was  suffered  to  appear  without  his  allow- 
ance :  and  his  allowance  was  given  exclusively  to  the 
London  Gazette.  The  London  Gazette  came  out  onlv 
on  Mondays  and  Thursdays.  The  contents  generally 
were  a  royal  proclamation,  two  or  three  Tory  addresses, 
notices  of  two  or  three  promotions,  an  account  of  a 
skirmish  between  the  imperial  troops  and  the  Janis- 
saries on  the  Danube,  a  description  of  a  highAvayman, 
an  announcement  of  a  grand  cockfight  between  two 
persons  of  honour,  and  an  advertisement  offering  a 
reward  for  a  strayed  dog.     The  whole  made  up  two 

1  London  Gazette,  May  5.  and  17.  1680. 

*  There  is  a  very  curious,  and,  I  should  think,  unique  collection  of  theM 
papers  in  the  British  lluseum. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF  ENGLAND    IN   1685.  427 

pages  of  moderate  size.  Whatever  was  communicated 
respectino;  matters  of  the  hiixliest  moment  was  communi- 
cated  in  the  most  meagre  and  formal  style.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  when  the  government  was  disposed  to  gratify 
the  public  curiosity  respecting  an  imjoortant  transaction, 
a  broadside  was  put  forth  giving  fuller  details  than 
could  be  found  in  the  Gazette :  but  neither  the  Gazette 
nor  any  supplementary  broadside  printed  by  authority 
ever  contained  any  intelligence  which  it  did  not  suit  the 
purposes  of  the  court  to  publish.  The  most  important 
parliamentary  debates,  the  most  important  state  trials, 
recorded  in  our  history,  were  passed  over  in  profound 
silence.^  In  the  capital  the  coffee  houses  supplied  in 
some  measure  the  place  of  a  journal.  Thither  the 
Londoners  flocked,  as  the  Athenians  of  old  flocked  to 
the  market  place,  to  hear  whether  there  was  any  news. 
There  men  might  learn  how  brutally  a  Whig  had  been 
treated  the  day  before  in  Westminster  Hall,  what  hor- 
rible accounts  the  letters  from  Edinburgh  gave  of  the 
torturing  of  Covenanters,  how  grossly  the  Navy  Board 
had  cheated  the  crown  in  the  victualling  of  the  fleet,  and 
what  grave  charges  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  had  brought 
against  the  Treasury  in  the  matter  of  the  hearth  money. 
But  people  who  lived  at  a  distance  from  the 

Newsletters. 

great  theatre  of  political  contention  could  be 
kept  regularly  informed  of  what  was  passing  there  only 
by  means  of  newsletters.  To  pre})are  such  letters  be- 
came a  calling  in  London,  as  it  now  is  among  the  na- 
tives of  India.  The  newswriter  rambled  from  cofl'ee 
room  to  coffee  room,  collecting  reports,  squeezed  him- 
self into  the  Sessions  House  at  the  Old  Bailey  if  there 
was  an  interesting  trial,  nay,  perhaps  obtained  admis- 

1  For  example,  tliere  is  not  a  word  in  the  Gazette  about  tlie  impdrtnnt 
parliamentary  proeeedings  of  November  1GS5,  or  about  the  trial  and  acquit- 
tal of  the  seven  IJisliops. 


428  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Cii.  III. 

sion  to  the  gallery  of  Whitehall,  and  noticed  how  the 
King  and  Duke  looked.  In  this  way  he  gathered  ma- 
terials for  weekly  epistles  destined  to  enlighten  some 
county  town  or  some  bench  of  rustic  magistrates. 
Such  were  the  sources  from  which  the  inhabitants  of 
the  largest  provincial  cities,  and  the  great  body  of  the 
gentry  and  clergy,  learned  almost  all  that  they  knew  of 
the  history  of  their  own  time.  We  must  suppose  that 
at  Cambridge  there  were  as  many  persons  curious  to 
know  what  was  passing  in  the  world  as  at  almost  any 
place  in  the  kingdom,  out  of  London.  Yet  at  Cam- 
bridge, during  a  great  part  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second,  the  Doctors  of  Laws  and  the  Masters  of  Arts 
had  no  regular  supply  of  news  except  through  the  Lon- 
don Gazette.  At  leno;th  the  services  of  one  of  the  col- 
lectors  of  intelligence  in  the  capital  were  employed. 
That  was  a  memorable  day 'on  which  the  fii'st  news- 
letter from  London  was  laid  on  the  table  of  the  only 
coffee  room  in  Cambridc^e.^  At  the  seat  of  a  man  of 
fortune  in  the  country  the  newsletter  was  impatiently 
expected.  Within  a  week  after  it  had  arrived  it  had 
been  tlumibed  by  twenty  families.  It  furnished  the 
neighbouring  squires  with  matter  for  talk  over  their 
October,  and  the  neighbouring  rectors  with  topics  for 
sharp  sermons  against  Whiggery  or  Popery.  Many  of 
these  curious  journals  might  doubtless  still  be  detected 
by  a  diligent  search  in  the  archives  of  old  families. 
Some  are  to  be  found  in  our  public  libraries  ;  and  one 
series,  Mdiich  is  not  the  least  valuable  part  of  the  liter- 
ary treasures  collected  by  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  will 
be  occasionally  quoted  in  the  course  of  tliis  work.^ 

1  Roger  North's  Life  of  Dr.  John  North.     On  the  subject  of  newsletters, 
see  the  Examen,  133. 

2  1  take  this  opportunity  of  expressing  my  warm  gratitude  to  the  family 
of  my  dear  and  honoured  friend  Sir  James  Mackintosh  for  confiding  to  me 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENGLAND    IN   1685.  429 

It  is  scarcTelv  necessary  to  sav  tliat  there  were  then 
no  provincial  newspajiers.  Indeed,  except  in  the  capi- 
tal and  at  the  two  Universities,  there  was  scarcely  a 
printer  in  the  kingdom.  The  only  press  in  England 
north  of  Trent  appears  to  have  been  at  York.' 

It  was  not  only  by  means  of  the  London  Gazette  that 
the  government  undertook  to  furnish  political  The  obser- 
instruction  to  the  people.  That  journal  con-  ^'''°''' 
tained  a  scanty  supply  of  news  without  comment. 
Another  journal,  jmblished  under  the  patronage  of  the 
court,  consisted  of  comment  without  news.  This  paper, 
called  the  Observator,  was  edited  by  an  old  Tory  pam- 
phleteer named  Roger  Lestrange.  Lcstrange  was  by 
no  means  deficient  in  readiness  and  shrewdness  ;  and 
his  diction,  though  coarse,  and  disfigured  by  a  mean 
and  flippant  jargon  which  then  passed  for  wit  in  the 
green  room  and  the  tavern,  was  not  without  keenness 
and  vigour.  But  his  nature,  at  once  ferocious  and 
ignoble,  showed  itself  in  every  line  that  he  penned. 
When  the  first  Observators  appeared  there  was  some 
excuse  for  his  acrimony.  For  the  Whigs  were  then 
powerful  ;  and  he  had  to  contend  against  numerous 
adversaries,  whose  unscrupulous  violence  might  seem 
to  justify  unsparing  retaliation.  But  in  1685  all  oji- 
position   had  been  crushed.     A  generous  spirit  would 

tho  materials  colleclccl  by  him  at  a  time  whpii  lio  incditafpd  a  work  similar 
to  that  which  I  have  undertaken.  I  have  never  .'^een,  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  there  anywhere  exist.s,  within  the  same  compas«,  so  noble  a  collection 
of  extracts  from  public  and  private  archives.  The  jiidtrmenf  with  which  Sir 
James,  in  great  masses  of  the  rudest  ore  in  history,  selected  what  was  valu- 
able, and  rejected  what  was  worthless,  can  be  fully  appreciated  only  by  one 
who  has  toiled  after  him  in  the  same  mine. 

1  Life  of  Thomas  Gent.  A  complete  list  of  all  printings  houses  in  1724 
will  be  found  in  Nichols's  T-iterary  Anecdotes  of  the  eighteenth  ccnturi-. 
There  had  tln;n  i)een  a  great  increase  within  a  few  years  in  the  number  of 
presses;  and  yet  there  were  thirty-four  counties  in  which  there  was  do 
printer,  one  of  those  counties  being  Lancashire. 


430  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

have  disdained  to  insult  a  party  whicli  could  not  reply, 
and  to  aggravate  the  misery  of  prisoners,  of  exiles,  of 
bereaved  families :  but  from  the  malice  of  Lestrano-e 
the  grave  was  no  hiding  place,  and  the  house  of  mourn- 
ing no  sanctuary.  In  the  last  month  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Second,  William  Jenkyn,  an  aged  dissent- 
ing pastor  of  great  note,  who  had  been  cruelly  perse- 
cuted for  no  crime  but  that  of  worshipping  God  ac- 
cording to  the  fashion  generally  followed  throughout 
Protestant  Europe,  died  of  hardships  and  privations  in 
Newgate.  The  outbreak  of  popular  sympathy  could  not 
be  repressed.  The  corpse  was  followed  to  the  grave 
by  a  train  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  coaches.  Even 
courtiers  looked  sad.  Even  the  unthinking;  King 
showed  some  signs  of  concern.  Lestrange  alone  set 
up  a  howl  of  savage  exultation,  laughed  at  the  weak 
compassion  of  the  Trimmers,  proclaimed  that  the  blas- 
phemous old  impostor  liad  met  with  a  most  righteous 
punishment,  and  vowed  to  wage  war,  not  only  to  the 
death,  but  after  death,  with  all  the  mock  saints  and 
martyrs.^  Such  was  the  spirit  of  the  paper  which  was 
at  this  time  the  oracle  of  the  Tory  party,  and  especially 
of  the  parochial  clergy. 

Literature  which  could  be  carried  by  the  post  bag 
Scarcity  of  then  fomicd  the  greater  part  of  the  intel- 
country"  Icctual  nutriment  ruminated  by  the  country 
places.  divines  and  country  justices.      The  difficulty 

and  expense  of  conveying  large  packets  from  place  to 
place  was  so  great,  that  an  extensive  work  was  longer 
in  making  its  way  from  Paternoster  Row  to  Devon- 
shire or  Lancashire  than  it  now  is  in  reaching  Ken- 
tucky.     How    scantily    a   rural    parsonage    was    then 

1  Observator,  Jan.  29.  and  31.  1685.     Calamy's  Life  of  Baxter.    Non 
conformist  Memorial. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND  IN    1G85.  431 

furnished,  even  with  books  the  most  necessary  to  a 
theologian,  has  ah-eady  been  remarked.  The  houses 
of  tlie  gentry  were  not  more  plentifully  supplied.  Few 
knights  of  the  shire  had  libraries  so  good  as  may  now 
perpetually  be  found  in  a  servants'  hall,  or  in  the  back 
jiarlour  of  a  small  shopkeeper.  An  esquire  passed 
among  his  neio;hbours  for  a  great  scholar,  if  Hudibras 
and  Baker's  Chronicle,  Tarlton's  Jests  and  the  Seven 
Champions  of  Christendom,  lay  in  his  hall  windov; 
among  the  fishing  rods  and  fowling  pieces.  No  circu- 
lating library,  no  book  society  then  existed  even  in  the 
capital :  but  in  the  cajiital  those  students  who  could  not 
afford  to  purchase  largely  had  a  resource.  The  sho})S 
of  the  great  booksellers,  near  Saint  Paul's  Churchyard, 
were  crowded  every  day  and  all  day  long  with  readers  ; 
and  a  known  customer  was  often  permitted  to  carry  a 
volume  home.  In  the  country  there  was  no  such  ac- 
commodation ;  and  every  man  was  under  the  necessity 
of  buying  whatever  he  wished  to  read.^ 

As  to  the  lady  of  the  manor  and  her  daughters,  their 
literary  stores  generally  consisted  of  a  ])rayer  pen.aie 
book  and  a  receipt  book.  But  in  truth  they  ''^""^='«''"- 
lost  little  by  living  in  rural  seclusion.  For,  even  in 
the  highest  ranks,  and  in  those  situations  which  afforded 
the  greatest  facilities  for  mental  improvement,  the  Eng- 
lish women  of  that  generation  were  decidedly  worse 
educated  than  they  have  been  at  any  other  time  since 
the  revival  of  learning.  At  an  earlier  period  they  had 
studied  the  masteri)ieces  of  ancient  genius.  In  the 
jiresent  day  they  seldom  bestow  much  attention  on  the 

1  Cotton  seems,  from  his  Anj^ler,  to  have  found  room  for  his  whole 
library  in  his  hall  window;  and  Cotton  was  a  man  of  letters.  Even  when 
Franklin  first  visited  London  in  1724,  circiilatinLT  liliraries  were  unknown 
there.  The  crowd  at  the  booksellers'  shops  in  ]>ittle  Britain  is  mentioned 
by  Roger  North  in  his  life  of  his  brother  John. 


432  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  HI. 

dead  languages ;  but  tliey  are  familiar  with  the  tongue 
of  Pascal  and  Moliere,  witli  the  tongue  of  Dante  and 
Tasso,  with  the  tongue  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  ;  nor  is 
there  any  purer  or  more  graceful  English  than  that 
which  accomplished  women  now  speak  and  write. 
But,  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  culture  of  the  female  mind  seems  to  have 
been  almost  entirely  neglected.  If  a  damsel  had  the 
l(!ast  smattering  of  literature  she  was  regarded  as  a 
prodigy.  Ladies  highly  born,  highly  bred,  and  natu- 
rally quick  witted,  were  unable  to  write  a  line  in  their 
mother  tongue  without  solecisms  and  faults  of  spell- 
ing such  as  a  charity  girl  would  now  be  ashamed  to 
3ommit.^ 

The  explanation  ma}''  easily  be  found.  Extravagant 
licentiousness,  the  natural  eifect  of  extravagant  auster- 
ity, was  now  the  mode  :  and  licentiousness  had  pro- 
duced its  ordinary  effect,  the  moral  and  intellectual 
degradation  of  women.  To  their  personal  beauty,  it  was 
the  fashion  to  pay  rude  and  impudent  homage.  But  the 
admiration  and  desire  which  they  inspired  Avere  seldom 
mingled  with  respect,  with  affection,  or  with  any  chival- 
rous sentiment.  The  qualities  which  fit  them  to  be  com- 
panions, advisers,  confidential  friends,  rather  repelled 
than  attracted  the  libertines  of  Whitehall.  In  that 
court  a  maid  of  honour,  who  dressed  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  do  full  justice  to  a  white  bosom,  who  ogled  signifi- 
cantly, who  danced  voluptuously,  who  excelled  in  pert 

1  One  instance  will  suffice.  Queen  Jlary  had  good  natural  abilities, 
had  been  educated  by  a  Bishop,  was  fond  of  histoiy  and  poetn%  and  was 
leganled  by  very  eminent  men  as  a  superior  woman.  There  is,  in  the 
library  at  the  Hague,  a  superb  English  Bible  which  was  delivered  to  her 
when  she  was  crowned  in  Westminster  Abbey.  In  the  title  page  are  these 
w)rds  in  her  own  hand,  "This  book  was  given  the  King  and  I,  at  our 
crownation.    Marie  R." 


Ch.  ni-l  STATE    OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  433 

re])artee,  wlio  was  not  asliamed  to  romp  with  Lords  of 
the  Bedchamber  and  Captains  of  the  Guards,  to  sing 
slj  verses  with  sly  expression,  or  to  put  on  a  page's 
dress  for  a  froHc,  was  more  hkely  to  be  followed  and 
admired,  more  likely  to  be  honoured  with  royal  atten- 
tions, more  likely  to  win  a  rich  and  noble  husband  than 
Jane  Grey  or  Lucy  Hutchinson  would  have  been.  In 
such  circumstances  the  standard  of  female  attainments 
was  necessarily  low ;  and  it  was  more  dangerous  to  be 
above  that  standard  than  to  be  beneath  it.  Extreme 
ignorance  and  frivolity  were  thought  less  unbecoming  in 
a  lady  than  the  slightest  tincture  of  pedantry.  Of  the 
too  celebrated  women  whose  faces  we  still  admire  on  the 
walls  of  Hampton  Court,  few  indeed  were  in  the  habit  of 
reading  anything  more  valuable  than  acrostics,  lampoons, 
and  translations  of  the  Clelia  and  the  Grand  Cyrus. 

The  literary  acquirements,  even  of  the  accomplished 
gentlemen  of  that  generation,  seem  to  have  Literary  at- 
een  somewhat  less  sohd  and  profound  than  gcaticmcn. 
at  an  earlier  or  a  later  period.  Greek  learning,  at  least, 
did  not  flourish  among  us  in  the  days  of  Cliarles  the 
Second,  as  it  had  flourished  before  the  civil  war,  or  as 
it  again  flourished  long  after  the  Revolution.  There 
were  undoubtedly  scholars  to  whom  the  whole  Greek 
literature,  from  Homer  to  Photius,  was  fomiliar  :  but 
such  scholars  were  to  be  found  almost  exclusively  amono- 
the  clergy  resident  at  the  Universities,  and  even  at  the 
Universities  were  few,  and  were  not  fully  apj)rcciated. 
At  Cambridge  it  was  not  thought  by  any  means  neces- 
sary that  a  divine  shoidd  be  able  to  read  the  Gospels  in 
the  original.!     Nor  was  the  standard  at  Oxford  hio-her. 

^  1  Ki.f,'er  North  tells  u.s  that  his  brotlier  John,  who  was  Greek  professor  at 
Cambridge,  complained  bitterly  of  the  general  neglect  of  the  Greek  tongue 
among  the  academical  clergy. 
vol,.  I.  28 


434  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Cii.  HI 

When,  in  the  reign  of  William  the  Third,  Christ  Church 
rose  up  as  one  man  to  defend  the  genuineness  of  tlie 
Epistles  of  Phalaris,  that  great  college,  then  considered 
as  the  first  seat  of  philology  in  the  kingdom,  could  not 
muster  such  a  stock  of  Attic  learning  as  is  now  pos- 
sessed by  several  youths  at  every  great  public  school. 
It  may  easily  be  supposed  that  a  dead  language,  neg- 
lected at  the  Universities,  was  not  much  studied  by  men 
of  the  world.  In  a  former  age  the  poetry  and  eloquence 
of  Gniece  had  been  the  delight  of  Raleio-h  and  Falkland. 
In  a  later  age  the  poetry  and  eloquence  of  Greece  were 
the  delight  of  Pitt  and  Fox,  of  Windham  and  Gren- 
ville.  But  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century  there  was  in  England  scarcely  one  eminent 
statesman  who  could  read  with  enjoyment  a  page  of 
Sophocles  or  Plato. 

Good  Latin  scholars  were  numerous.  The  language 
of  Rome,  indeed,  had  not  altogether  lost  its  im])erial 
prerogatives,  and  was  still,  in  many  parts  of  Europe, 
almost  indispensable  to  a  traveller  or  a  negotiator.  To 
speak  it  well  was  therefore  a  much  more  common  ac- 
complishment than  in  our  time  ;  and  neither  Oxford 
nor  Cambridge  wanted  poets  who,  on  a  great  occasion, 
could  lay  at  the  foot  of  the  throne  happy  imitations  of 
the  verses  in  which  Virgil  and  Ovid  had  celebrated  the 
greatness  of  Augustus. 

Yet  even  the  Latin  was  giving  way  to  a  younger  rival. 
Influence  of    Fraucc  United  at  that  time  almost  every  species 

French  liter-  i 

aiure.  ot  asccndcncy.     Her  military  glory  was  at  the 

height.  She  had  vanquished  mighty  coalitions.  She  had 
dictated  treaties.  She  had  subjugated  great  cities  and 
provinces.  She  had  forced  the  Castilian  pride  to  yield 
her  the  precedence.  She  had  summoned  Italian  princes 
to  prostrate  themselves  at  her  footstool.     Her  authority 


Ch.  III.J  state  op  ENGLAND   IN   1685.  485 

was  supreme  in  all  matters  of  good  breeding,  from  a 
duel  to  a  minuet.     She  determined  how  a  gentleman's 
coat  must  be  cut,  how  long  his  peruke  must  be,  whether 
his  heels  must  be  high  or  low,  and  whether  the  lace 
on  his  hat  must  be  broad   or  narrow.     In  literature 
she  gave  law  to  the  world.     The  fame  of  her  great 
writers  filled  Europe.    No  other  country  could  produce 
a  tragic  poet  equal  to  Racine,  a  comic  poet  equal  to 
Moliere,  a  trifler  so  agreeable  as  La  Fontaine,  a  rheto- 
rician so  skilful  as  Bossuet.     The  literary  glory  of  Italy 
and  of  Spain  had  set ;  that  of  Germany  had  not  yet 
dawned.     The  genius,  therefore,  of  the  eminent  men 
who  adorned  Paris  shone  forth  with  a  splendour  which 
was  set  off  to  full  advantage  by  contrast.     France,  in- 
deed, had  at  that  time  an  empire  over  mankind,  such  as 
even  the  Roman  Republic  never  attained.     For,  when 
Rome  was  politically  dominant,  she  was  in  arts  and  let- 
ters the  humble  pupil  of  Greece.    France  had,  over  the 
surrounding  countries,  at  once  the  ascendency  which 
Rome    had   over  Greece,  and  the  ascendency  which 
Greece  had  over  Rome.     French  was  fest  becomino; 
the  universal  language,  the   language    of  fashionable 
society,  the  language  of  diplomacy.     At  several  courts 
princes  and  nobles  spoke  it  more  accurately  and  politely 
than  their  mother  tono;ue.    In  our  island  there  was  less 
of  this  servility  than  on  the  Continent.     Neither  our 
good  nor  our  bad  qualities  were  those  of  imitators.    Yet 
e\en   here  homage  was  paid,  awkwardly  indeed  and 
s\illenly,  to  the  literary  supremacy  of  our  neighbours. 
The  melodious  Tuscan,  so  familiar  to  the  gallants  and 
ladies  of  the  court  of  Elizabetli,  sank  into  contemjit. 
A  gentleman  who  quoted  Horace  or  Terence  was  con- 
sidered in  good  com}>any  as  a  pompous  pedant.     But 
to  garnish  his  conversation  with  scrajis  of  French  was 


436  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

the  best  proof  which  he  could  give  of  his  parts  and  at- 
tainments.^ New  canons-  of  criticism,  new  models  of 
style  came  into  fashion.  The  quaint  ingenuity  which 
had  deformed  the  verses  of  Donne,  and  had  been  a 
blemish  on  those  of  Cowlej'^,  disappeared  from  our  poe- 
try. Our  prose  became  less  majestic,  less  artfully  m- 
volved,  less  variously  musical  than  that  of  an  earlier  age, 
but  more  lucid,  more  easy,  and  better  fitted  for  contro- 
versy and  narrative.  In  these  changes  it  is  impossible 
not  to  recognise  the  influence  of  French  precept  and  of 
French  example.  Great  masters  of  our  language,  in 
their  most  dignified  compositions,  affected  to  use  French 
words,  when  English  words,  quite  as  expressive  and 
sonorous,  were  at  hand :  ^  and  from  France  was  im- 
ported the  tragedy  in  rhyme,  an  exotic  which,  in  our 
soil,  drooped,  and  speedily  died. 

It  would  have  been  well  if  our  writers  had  also 
Immorality  copicd  the  dccorum  which  their  great  French 
mirature'of  coutemporarles,  with  few  exceptions,  pre- 
Engiand  gcrvcd  ;  for  the  profligacy  of  the  English 
plays,  satires,  songs,  and  novels  of  that  age  is  a  deep 
blot  on  our  national  fame.  The  evil  may  easily  be 
traced  to  its  source.  The  wits  and  the  Puritans  had 
never  been  on  friendly  terms.  There  was  no  sym- 
pathy between  the  two  classes.  They  looked  on  the 
whole  system  of  human  life  from  different  points  and 
in  different  lio-hts.     The  earnest  of  each  was  the  iest 


i  Butler,  in  a  satire  of  great  asperity,  says, 

"  For,  though  to  smatter  words  of  Greek 
And  Latin  be  the  rhetorique 
Of  pedants  counted,  and  vainglorious, 
To  smatter  French  is  meritorious." 

2  The  most  offensive  instance  which  I  remember  is  in  a  poem  on  the  cor- 
onation of  Charles  the  Second  by  Dryden,  who  certainly  could  not  plead 
poverty  as  an  excuse  for  borrowinji;  words  from  any  foreign  tongue:  — 

"  Hither  in  summer  evenings  you  repair 
To  taste  the  fraicheur  of  the  cooler  air." 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  437 

of  the  other.  The  pleasures  of  each  were  the  torments 
of  the  other.  To  the  stern  precisian  even  the  iniio- 
cent  sport  of  the  fancy  seemed  a  crime.  To  light  and 
festive  natures  the  solemnity  of  the  zealous  brethren 
furnished  copious  matter  of  ridicule.  From  the  Refor 
mation  to  the  ci^nl  war,  almost  every  writer,  gifted  with 
a  fine  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  had  taken  some  opportu- 
nity of  assailing  the  straio-ht  haired,  snufflino-,  whinino- 
saints,  who  christened  their  children  out  of  the  Book 
of  Nehemiah,  who  groaned  in  spirit  at  the  sight  of  Jack 
in  the  Green,  and  who  thought  it  impious  to  taste  plum 
porridge  on  Christmas  day.  At  length  a  time  came 
when  the  laughers  began  to  look  grave  in  their  turn. 
The  rigid,  ungainly  zealots,  after  having  furnished  much 
good  sport  during  two  generations,  rose  up  in  arms, 
conquered,  ruled,  and,  grimly  smiling,  trod  down  under 
their  feet  the  whole  crowd  of  mockers.  The  wounds 
inflicted  by  gay  and  petulant  malice  were  retaliated  with 
the  gloomy  and  implacable  malice  peculiar  to  bigots  who 
mistake  their  own  rancour  for  virtue.  The  theatres 
were  closed.  The  players  were  flogged.  The  press  was 
jmt  under  the  guardianship  of  austere  licensers.  The 
Muses  were  banished  from  their  own  favourite  haunts, 
Cambridge  and  Oxford.  Cowley,  Crashaw,  and  Cleve- 
land were  ejected  from  their  fellowships.  The  young 
candidate  for  academical  honours  Avas  no  lon<ier  re- 
quired  to  write  Ovidian  epistles  or  Virgilian  pastorals, 
but  was  strictly  interrogated  by  a  synod  of  lowering 
Supralapsarians  as  to  the  day  and  hour  when  he  expe- 
rienced the  new  birth.  Such  a  system  was  of  course 
fruitful  of  hypocrites.  Under  sober  clothing  and  under 
visages  composed  to  the  expression  of  austerity  lay  hid 
during  several  years  the  intense  desire  of  license  and  of 
revenge.     At  length  that  desire  was  gratified.     The 


438  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

Restoration  emancipated  thousands  of  minds  from  a 
yoke  which  had  become  insupportable.  The  old  fight 
recommenced,  but  with  an  animosity  altogether  new. 
It  was  now  not  a  sportive  combat,  but  a  war  to  the 
death.  The  Roundhead  had  no  better  quarter  to  ex- 
pect from  those  whom  he  had  persecuted  than  a  cruel 
slave  driver  can  expect  from  insurgent  slaves  still  bear- 
ing the  marks  of  his  collars  and  his  scourges. 

The  war  between  wit  and  Puritanism  soon  becamo 
a  war  between  wit  and  morality.  The  hostility  excited 
by  a  grotesque  caricature  of  virtue  did  not  spare  virtue 
herself  Whatever  the  canting  Roundhead  had  re- 
garded with  reverence  was  insulted.  Whatever  he  had 
proscribed  was  favoured.  Because  he  had  been  scru- 
pulous about  trifles,  all  scruples  were  treated  with  deri- 
sion. Because  he  had  covered  his  failings  with  the 
mask  of  devotion,  men  were  encouraged  to  obtrude  with 
Cynic  impudence  all  their  most  scandalous  vices  on 
the  public  eye.  Because  he  had  punished  illicit  love 
with  barbarous  severity,  virgin  purity  and  conjugal  fidel- 
ity were  made  a  jest.  To  that  sanctimonious  jargon 
wliich  was  his  Shibboleth,  was  opposed  another  jargon 
not  less  absurd  and  much  more  odious.  As  he  never 
opened  his  mouth  except  in  scriptural  phrase,  the  new 
breed  of  wits  and  fine  gentlemen  never  opened  their 
mouths  without  uttering  ribaldry  of  which  a  porter 
would  now  be  ashamed,  and  without  calling  on  their 
Maker  to  curse  them,  sink  them,  confound  them,  blast 
them,  and  damn  them. 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  our  polite  literatui'e, 
when  it  revived  with  the  revival  of  the  old  ci\al  and 
ecclesiastical  polity,  should  have  been  profoundly  im- 
moral. A  few  eminent  men,  M'ho  belonged  to  an  earli^er 
and  better  age,  were  exempt  from  the  general  contagion. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  439 

The  verse  of  Waller  still  breathed  the  sentiments  which 
had  animated  a  more  cliivalrous  generation.  Cowley, 
(listinixuished  as  a  loyalist  and  as  a  man  of  letters,  raised 
liis  voice  courageously  against  the  immorality  which 
disgraced  both  letters  and  loyalty.  A  mightier  poet, 
tried  at  once  by  pain,  danger,  poverty,  obloquy  and 
blindness,  meditated,  undisturbed  by  the  obscene  tumult 
which  raged  all  around  him,  a  song  so  sublime  and  so 
holy  that  it  would  not  have  misbecome  the  lips  of  those 
ethereal  Virtues  whom  he  saw,  with  that  inner  eye 
which  no  calamity  could  darken,  flinging  down  on  the 
jasper  pavement  their  crowns  of  amaranth  and  gold. 
The  vigorous  and  fertile  genius  of  Butler,  if  it  did  not 
altogether  escape  the  prevailing  infection,  took  the  dis- 
ease in  a  mild  form.  But  these  were  men  whose  minds 
had  been  trained  in  a  world  which  had  passed  away. 
They  gave  place  in  no  long  time  to  a  younger  genera- 
tion of  wits  ;  and  of  that  generation,  from  Dryden  down 
to  Durfey,  the  common  characteristic  was  hardhearted, 
shameless,  swaggering  licentiousness,  at  once  inelegant 
and  inhuman.  The  influence  of  these  writers  was 
doubtless  noxious,  yet  less  noxious  than  it  would  have 
been  had  they  been  less  depraved.  The  poison  which 
they  administered  was  so  strong  that  it  was,  in  no  long 
time,  rejected  with  nausea.  None  of  them  understood 
the  dangerous  art  of  associating  images  of  unlawful 
pleasure  with  all  that  is  endearing  and  ennobling.  None 
of  them  was  aware  that  a  certain  decorum  is  essential 
even  to  volujituousness,  that  drapery  may  be  more 
alluring  than  exposure,  and  that  the  imagination  may 
be  far  more  powerfully  moved  by  delicate  hints  which 
impel  it  to  exert  itself  than  by  gross  descriptions  which 
it  takes  in  passively. 

The  spirit  of  the   Antipuritan   reaction  pervades  al« 


440  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Cii.  III. 

most  the  vvhole  polite  literature  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second.  But  the  very  quintessence  of  that  spirit 
will  be  found  in  the  comic  drama.  The  playhouses, 
shut  by  the  meddling  fanatic  in  the  day  of  his  power, 
were  again  crowded.  To  their  old  attractions  new 
and  more  powerful  attractions  had  been  added.  Sce- 
nery, dresses,  and  decorations  such  as  would  now  be 
thought  mean  or  absurd,  but  such  as  would  have  been 
esteemed  incredibly  magnificent  by  those  who,  early 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  sate  on  the  filthy  benches 
of  the  Hope,  or  under  the  thatched  roof  of  the  Rose, 
dazzled  the  eyes  of  the  multitude.  The  fascination 
of  sex  was  called  in  to  aid  the  fascination  of  art :  and 
the  young  spectator  saw,  with  emotions  unknown  to 
the  contemporaries  of  Shakspeare  and  Jonson,  tender 
and  sprightly  heroines  personated  by  lovely  women. 
From  the  day  on  which  the  theatres  were  reopened 
they  became  seminaries  of  vice ;  and  the  evil  propa- 
gated itself.  The  profligacy  of  the  representations  soon 
drove  away  sober  people.  The  frivolous  and  dissolute 
who  remained  required  every  year  stronger  and  stronger 
stimulants.  Thus  the  artists  corrupted  the  spectators, 
and  the  spectators  the  artists,  till  the  turpitude  of  the 
drama  became  such  as  must  astonish  all  who  are  not 
aware  that  extreme  relaxation  is  the  natural  effect  of 
extreme  i-estraint,  and  that  an  age  of  hypocrisy  is,  in 
the  regular  course  of  things,  followed  by  an  age  of 
impudence. 

Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  the  times  than  the 
(^are  with  which  the  poets  contrived  to  put  all  their 
loosest  verses  into  the  mouths  of  women.  The  com- 
positions in  which  the  greatest  license  was  taken  were 
the  epilogues.  They  were  almost  always  recited  by 
favourite  actresses  ;  and  nothing  charmed  the  depraved 


1 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  441 

audience  so  much  as  to  hear  Hues  grossly  indecent 
repeated  by  a  beautiful  girl,  wlio  was  supposed  to  have 
not  yet  lost  her  innocence.^ 

Our  theatre  was  indebted  in  that  age  foi"  many  plots 
and  characters  to  Spain,  to  France,  and  to  the  old 
English  masters  :  but  whatever  our  dramatists  touched 
they  tainted.  In  their  imitations  the  houses  of  Calde- 
ron's  stately  and  high  spirited  Castilian  gentlemen 
became  sties  of  vice,  Shakspeare's  Viola  a  procuress, 
Moliere's  JNIisanthrope  a  ravisher,  Moliere's  Agnes  an 
adulteress.  Nothing  could  be  so  pure  or  so  heroic  but 
that  it  became  foul  and  ignoble  by  transfusion  through 
those  foul  and  ignoble  minds. 

Such  was  the  state  of  the  drama  ;  and  the  drama 
was  the  department  of  polite  literature  in  which  a  poet 
had  the  best  chance  of  obtaining  a  subsistence  by  his 
pen.  The  sale  of  boohs  was  so  small  that  a  man  of 
the  greatest  name  could  expect  only  a  pittance  for  the 
copyright  of  the  best  ])erformance.  There  cannot  be 
a  stronger  instance  than  the  fate  of  Dryden's  last  pro- 
duction, the  Fables.  Tliat  volume  was  published  when 
he  was  universally  admitted  to  be  the  chief  of  living 
English  poets.  It  contains  about  twelve  thousand  lines. 
The  versification  is  admirable  ;  the  narratives  and  de- 
scriptions full  of  life.  To  this  day  Palamon  and  Arcite, 
Cymon  and  Iphigenia,  Tlicodore  and  Honoria,  are  the 
deliglit  both  of  critics  and  of  schoolboys.  The  collec- 
tion includes  Alexander's  Feast,  the  noblest  ode  in  our 
language.  For  the  copyrigiit  Dryden  received  two 
hnndi-ed  and  fifty  pounds,  less  than  in  our  days  has 
sometimes  been  paid  for    two    articles    in    a    review.^ 

1  Jeremy  Collier  has  censured  this  odious  practice  with  liis  usual  Ibrca 
»nd  keenness. 

2  The  contract  will  be  found  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's  edition  of  Dryden. 


I 


442  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

Nor  floes  tlie  bargain  seem  to  have  been  a  hard  one. 
For  the  book  went  off  slowly ;  and  the  second  edition 
was  not  required  till  the  author  had  been  ten  years  in 
his  grave.  By  writing  for  the  theatre  it  was  possible 
to  earn  a  much  larger  sum  with  much  less  trouble. 
Southern  made  seven  hundred  pounds  by  one  play.^ 
Otway  was  raised  from  beggary  to  temporary  affluence 
by  the  success  of  his  Don  Carlos.^  Shadwell  cleared 
a  hundred  and  thirty  pounds  by  a  single  representa- 
tion of  the  Squire  of  Alsatia.^  The  consequence  was 
that  every  man  who  had  to  live  by  his  wit  wrote  plays, 
whether  he  had  any  internal  vocation  to  write  plays 
or  not.  It  was  thus  with  Dryden.  As  a  satirist  he 
has  rivalled  Juvenal.  As  a  didactic  poet  he  perhaps 
might,  with  care  and  meditation,  have  rivalled  Lucre- 
tins.  Of  lyric  poets  he  is,  if  not  the  most  sublime,  the 
most  brilliant  and  spiritstii-ring.  But  nature,  profuse 
to  him  of  many  rare  gifts,  had  denied  him  the  dramatic 
faculty.  Nevertheless  all  the  energies  of  his  best  years 
were  wasted  on  dramatic  composition.  He  had  too 
much  judgment  not  to  be  a^^'are  that  in  the  power  of 
exhibiting  character  by  means  of  dialogue  he  was  defi- 
cient. That  deficiency  he  did  his  best  to  conceal,  some- 
times by  surprising  and  amusing  incidents,  sometimes 
by  stately  declamation,  sometimes  by  harmonious  num- 
bers, sometimes  by  ribaldry  but  too  well  suited  to  the 
taste  of  a  profane  and  licentious  pit.  Yet  he  never 
obtained  any  theatrical  success  equal  to  that  which  re- 
warded the  exertions  of  some  men  far  inferior  to  him  in 
general  powers.  He  thought  himself  fortunate  if  he 
cleared  a  hundred  guineas  by  a  play ;  a  scanty  remuner- 

1  See  the  Life  of  Southern,  by  Shiels. 

2  See  Rochester's  Trial  of  the  Poets. 

*  Some  Account  of  the  English  Stage. 


Uh.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  443 

atioii,  yet  apparently  larger  than  he  could  have  earned 
m  any  other  way  by  the  same  quantity  of  labour.^ 

The  recompense  which  the  wits  of  that  age  could 
obtain  from  the  public  was  so  small,  that  they  were 
under  the  necessity  of  eking  out  their  incomes  by  levy- 
ing contributions  on  the  great.  Every  rich  and  good- 
nature] lord  was  pestered  by  authors  with  a  mendi- 
cancy so  importunate,  and  a  flattery  so  abject,  as  may 
in  our  time  seem  incredible.  The  patron  to  whom  a 
work  was  inscribed  was  exj)ected  to  reward  the  writer 
with  a  purse  of  gold.  The  fee  paid  for  the  dedication 
of  a  book  was  often  much  larger  than  the  sum  which 
any  publisher  would  give  for  the  copyright.  Books 
were  therefore  frequently  printed  merely  that  they 
might  be  dedicated.  This  traffic  in  praise  produced 
the  effect  which  might  have  been  expected.  Adulation 
pushed  to  the  verge,  sometimes  of  nonsense,  and  some- 
times of  impiety,  was  not  thought  to  disgrace  a  poet. 
Independence,  veracity,  selfrespect,  were  things  not 
required  by  the  world  from  him.  In  truth,  he  was  in 
morals  something  between  a  pandar  and  a  beggar. 

To  the  other  vices  which  degraded  the  literary  chai-- 
acter  was  added,  towards  the  close  of  the  reio-n  of 
Charles  the  Second,  the  most  savage  intemperance  of 
party  spirit.  The  wits,  as  a  class,  had  been  impelled 
by  their  old  hatred  of  Puritanism  to  take  the  side  of 
the  court,  and  had  beeii  found  useful  allies.  Dryden, 
in  particular,  had  done  good  service  to  the  govern- 
ment. His  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  the  greatest 
satire  of  modern  times,  had  amazed  the  town,  li:i(l 
made  its.  way  with  unprecedented  rapidity  even  intd 
rural  districts,  and  had,  wherever  it  appeared,  bitterlv 
annoyed  the  Exclusionists,  and  raised  the  courage  of 

1  Life  of  Southern,  by  Shiels. 


444  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Ill 

the  Tories.  But  we  must  not,  in  the  admii'ation  whicli 
we  naturally  feel  for  noble  diction  and  versification, 
forget  the  great  distinctions  of  good  and  evil.  The 
spirit  by  which  Dryden  and  several  of  his  compeers 
were  at  this  time  animated  ao-ainst  the  Whigs  deserves 
to  be  called  fiendish.  The  servile  Judges  and  Sherifl's 
of  those  evil  days  could  not  shed  blood  so  fast  as  the 
poets  cried  out  for  it.  Calls  for  more  victims,  hideous 
jests  on  hanging,  bitter  taunts  on  those  who,  having 
stood  bv  the  Kino-  in  the  hour  of  dano-er,  now  advised 
him  to  deal  mercifully  and  generously  by  his  vanquished 
enemies,  were  publicly  recited  on  the  stage,  and,  that 
nothing  might  be  wanting  to  the  guilt  and  the  shame, 
were  recited  by  women,  who,  having  long  been  taught 
to  discard  all  modesty,  were  now  taught  to  discard  all 
compassion. 1 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that,  while  the  lio-hter  litera- 
statot  ture  of  England  was  thus  becoming  a  nui- 
En^aiiua.  sance  and  a  national  disgrace,  the  Eno-Hsh 
genius  was  effecting  in  science  a  revolution  wliich  will, 
to  the  end  of  time,  be  reckoned  among  the  highest 
achievements  of  the  human  intellect.  Bacon  had  sown 
the  good  seed  in  a  sluggish  soil  and  an  ungenial  sea- 
son. He  had  not  expected  an  early  crop,  and  in  his 
•ast  testament  had  solemnly  bequeathed  his  fame  to 
the  next  age.  During  a  whole  generation  his  phi- 
losophy had,  amidst  tumults,  wars,  and  proscriptions, 
been  slowly  ripening  in  a  few  well  constituted  minds. 
While  factions  were  strucpo-lino;  for  dominion  over  each 
other,  a  small  body  of  sages  had  turned  away  with 
benevolent  disdain  from  the  conflict,  and  had  devoted 


1  If  any  reader  thinks  my  expressions  too  severe,  I  would  advise  him  to 
read  Drj'den's  Epilogue  to  the  Duke  of  Guise,  and  to  observe  that  it  wa« 
t^iioken  bv  a  woman. 


Ch.  III.]  STATE    OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  445 

themselves  to  the  nobler  work  of  extending  the  do- 
minion of  man  over  matter.  As  soon  as  tranquillity 
was  restored,  these  teachers  easily  found  attentive 
audience.  For  the  discipline  through  which  the  nation 
had  passed  had  brought  the  public  mind  to  a  temper 
well  fitted  for  the  reception  of  the  Verulamian  doc- 
trine. The  civil  troubles  had  stimuUited  the  faculties 
of  the  educated  classes,  and  had  called  forth  a  restless 
activity  and  an  insatiable  curiosity,  such  as  had  not  be- 
fore been  known  among  us.  Yet  the  effect  of  those 
troubles  was  that  schemes  of  political  and  religious 
reform  were  generally  regarded  with  sus[)icion  and  con- 
tempt. During  twenty  years  the  chief  employment  of 
busy  and  ingenious  men  had  been  to  frame  constit;u- 
tions  with  first  magistrates,  without  first  magistrates, 
with  hereditary  senates,  with  senates  appointed  by 
lot,  with  annual  senates,  with  perpetual  senates.  In 
these  plans  nothing  was  omitted.  All  the  detail, 
all  the  nomenclature,  all  the  ceremonial  of  the  imag- 
inary government  was  fully  set  forth,  Polemarchs  and 
Phylarchs,  Tribes  and  Galaxies,  the  Lord  Archon 
and  the  Lord  Stratecus.  Which  ballot  boxes  were 
to  be  green  and  which  I'ed,  which  balls  were  to  be 
of  gold  and  which  of  silver,  which  magistrates  were 
to  wear  hats  and  which  black  velvet  caps  with  peaks, 
how  the  maqe  was  to  be  carried  and  wlieu  tlu;  heralds 
were  to  uncover,  tliese,  and  a  hundred  more  such  trifies, 
were  gravely  considered  and  arranged  by  men  of  no 
common  caj)acity  and  learning.'  But  the  time  for 
these  visions  had  gone  by ;  and,  ii'  any  steadfast  repub- 
lican still  continued  to  amuse  himself  with  them,  fear 
of  public  derision  and  of  a  criminal  information  gen- 
erally induced  him  to  keep  his  fancies  to  himself.  It 
1  See  particularly  Uarringtoii's  Oceana. 


446  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  |Ch.  Ill 

was  now  unpopular  and  unsafe  to  mutter  a  word 
against  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  monarchy :  but 
daring  and  ingenious  men  might  indemnify  themselves 
by  treating  with  disdain  what  had  lately  been  consid- 
ered as  the  fundamental  laws  of  nature.  The  torrent 
which  had  been  dammed  up  in  one  channel  rushed 
violently  into  another.  The  revolutionary  spirit,  ceas- 
ino-  to  operate  in  politics,  began  to  exert  itself  with 
unprecedented  vigour  and  hardihood  in  every  depart- 
ment of  physics.  The  year  1660,  the  era  of  the  res- 
toration of  the  old  constitution,  is  also  the  era  fi'om 
which  dates  the  ascendency  of  the  new  philosophy. 
In  that  year  the  Royal  Society,  destined  to  be  a  chief 
acfent  in  a  long  series  of  glorious  and  salutary  reforms, 
began  to  exist.^  In  a  few  months  experimental  science 
became  all  the  mode.  The  transfusion  of  blood,  the 
ponderation  of  air,  the  fixation  of  mercury,  succeeded 
to  that  place  in  the  public  mind  which  had  been  lately 
occupied  by  the  controversies  of  the  Rota.  Dreams 
of  pei-fect  fonns  of  government  made  way  for  dreams 
of  wings  with  which  men  were  to  fly  from  the  Tower 
to  the  Abbey,  and  of  doublekeeled  ships  which  were 
never  to  founder  in  the  fiercest  storm.  All  classes 
were  hurried  along  by  the  prevailing  sentiment.  Cav- 
alier and  Roundhead,  Churchman  and  Puritan  were 
for  once  allied.  Divines,  jurists,  statesmen,  nobles, 
princes,  swelled  the  triumph  of  the  Baconian  philoso- 
phy. Poets  sang  with  emulous  fervour  the  approach 
of  the  golden  age.  Cowley,  in  lines  weighty  with 
thought  and  resplendent  with  wit,  urged  the  chosen 
seed  to  take  possession  of  the  promised  land  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey,  that  land  which  their  great  de- 
liverer and  lawgiver  had  seen,  as  fi-om  the  summit  of 

1  See  Sprat's  History  of  the  Royal  Society. 


Ch.  III.J  state   op   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  447 

Pisgali,  but  had  not  been  j)ermittecl  to  enter.^  Dryden, 
with  more  zeal  tlian  knowledge,  joined  his  voice  to  the 
general  acclamation,  and  foretold  things  which  neither 
he  nor  anybody  else  understood.  The  Royal  Society, 
he  predicted,  would  soon  lead  us  to  the  extreme  verge 
of  the  globe,  and  there  delight  us  with  a  better  view  of 
the  moon.^  Two  able  and  aspiring  pi-elates.  Ward, 
Bishop  of  Salisbury,  and  Wilkins,  Bishop  of  Chester, 
were  conspicuous  among  the  leaders  of  the  movement. 
Its  history  was  eloquently  written  by  a  younger  divine, 
who  was  rising  to  high  distinction  in  his  pi'ofession, 
Thomas  Sprat,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Rochester.  Both 
Chief  Justice  Hale  and  Lord  Keeper  Guildford  stole 
some  hours  from  the  business  of  their  courts  to  write 
on  hydrostatics.  Indeed  it  was  under  the  immediate 
directions  of  Guildford  that  the  first  barometers  ever 
exposed  to  sale  in  Loiidon  were  constructed.^  Chem- 
istry divided,  for  a  time,  with  wine  and  love,  with  the 
stage  and  the  gaminij;  table,  with  the  intrio;ues  of  a 
courtier  and  the  intriixues  of  a  demaaomie,  the  atten- 
tion  of  the  tickle  Buckingham.  Rupert  has  the  credit 
of  having  invented  mez/.otinto  ;  and  from  him  is  named 
that  curious  bubble  of  glass  which  has  long  amused 
children  and  puzzled  philosophers.  Charles  himself 
had  a  laboratory  at  Whitehall,  and  was  far  more  active 
and  attentive  there  than  at  the  council  board.  It  w^as 
almost  necessary  to  the  character  of  a  fine  gentleman 
to  have  something  to  say  about  airpumj)s  and  tele- 
Bcopes  ;  and  even  fine  ladies,  now  and  then,  thought  it 
b<-:oming  to  affect  a  taste  for  science,  went  in  coaches 

1  Cowley's  Ode  to  tlie  Royal  Society. 

*  "  Then  wc  upon  thp  (;lolio's  la^^t  Terpo  shall  go, 

Ami  view  tlie  (veiin  Iwining  on  the  sk.v  ; 
Fi-oin  tlicnrc  our  rolling  nci^ilihours  wc  shall  know, 
AdU  on  the  lunar  world  securely  pry.'' 

Annus  Miiabilis,  IM 

•  North's  Life  of  Guildford. 


448  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  HI. 

and  six  to  visit  the  Gresham  curiosities,  and  broke  forth 
into  cries  of  delight  at  finding  that  a  magnet  really  at- 
tracted a  needle,  and  that  a  microscope  really  made  a 
fly  look  as  large  as  a  sparrow.^ 

In  this,  as  in  eveiy  great  stir  of  the  human  mind, 
there  was  doubtless  somethinp;  which  might  well  move 
a  smile.  It  is  the  universal  law  that  whatever  pursuit, 
whatever  doctrine,  becomes  fashionable,  shall  lose  a 
portion  of  that  dignity  which  it  had  possessed  while  it 
was  confined  to  a  small  but  eaniest  minority,  and  was 
loved  for  its  own  sake  alone.  It  is  true  that  the  follies 
of  some  persons  who,  without  any  real  aptitude  for 
science,  professed  a  passion  for  it,  furnished  matter  of 
contemptuous  mirth  to  a  few  malignant  satirists  who 
belonged  to  the  preceding  generation,  and  were  not  dis- 
posed to  unlearn  the  lore  of  their  youth.^  But  it  is  not 
less  true  that  the  great  work  of  interpreting  nature  was 
performed  by  the  English  of  that  age  as  it  had  never 
before  been  performed  in  any  age  by  any  nation.  The 
spirit  of  Francis  Bacon  was  abroad,  a  spirit  admirably 
compounded  of  audacity  and  sobriety.  There  Avas  a 
strong  persuasion  that  the  whole  world  was  full  of 
secrets  of  high  moment  to  the  happiness  of  man,  and 
that  man  had,  by  his  Maker,  been  intrusted  with  the 
key  which,  rightl}^  used,  would  give  access  to  them. 
There  was  at  the  same  time  a  conviction  that  in  physics 
it  was  impossible  to  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  general 
lav/s  except  by  the  careful  observation  of  particular 
facts.  Deeply  impressed  Avith  these  great  truths,  the 
professors  of  the  new  philosophy  applied  themselves  to 

1  Pepys's  Diary,  May  30.  1667. 

2  Butler  was,  I  think,  the  only  man  of  real  genius  who,  between  the 
Restoration  and  the  Revolution,  showed  a  bitter  enmity  to  the  new  philos- 
ophy, as  it  was  then  called  See  the  Satire  on  the  Royal  Society,  and  the 
Elephant  in  the  Jloon 


II 


t 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF  ENGLAND   IN   1685.  449 

their  task,  and,  before  a  quarter  of  a  century  liad  ex- 
pired, they  had  given  ample  earnest  of  wliat  lias  since 
been  achieved.  Ah'eady  a  reform  of  agriculture  had 
been  commenced.  New  vegetables  were  cultivated. 
New  implements  of  husbandry  were  employed.  New 
manures  were  applied  to  the  soil.^  Evelyn  had,  under 
the  formal  sanction  of  the  Royal  Society,  given  instruc- 
tion to  his  countrymen  in  planting.  Temple,  in  his 
intervals  of  leisure,  had  tried  many  experiments  in  hor- 
ticulture, and  had  proved  that  many  delicate  fruits,  the 
natives  of  more  favoured  climates,  might,  with  the  help 
of  art,  be  grown  on  English  ground.  Medicine,  which  in 
Fi'ance  was  still  in  abject  bondage,  and  afforded  an  inex- 
haustible subject  of  just  ridicule  to  Moliere,  had  in  Eng- 
land become  an  experimental  and  progressive  science, 
and  every  day  made  some  new  advance,  in  defiance 
of  Hippocrates  and  Galen.  The  attention  of  specula- 
tive men  had  been,  for  the  first  time,  directed  to  the 
important  subject  of  sanitary  police.  The  great  plague 
of  1GG5  induced  them  to  consider  with  care  the  defec- 
tive architecture,  draininir,  and  ventilation  of  the  cani- 
tab  The  great  fire  of  1666  aft'orded  an  opportunity  for 
effecting  extensive  improvements.  The  whole  matter 
was  diligently  examined  by  the  Royal  Society  ;  and  to 
the  suggestions  of  that  body  must  be  j)artly  attributed 
the  changes  which,  though  far  short  of  what  the  ]mblic 
welfare  required,  yet  made  a  wide  difference  between 
the  new  and  the  old  London,  and  probably  put  a  final 
close  to  the  ravages  of  pestilence  in  our  country.^  At 
the  same  time  one  of  the  founders  of  the  society.  Sir 
William  Petty,  created  the  science  of  political  arithme- 

'  The  pa^rerncss  witli  wliicli  the  agriculturists  of  tliat  age  triod  experi- 
ments and  introduced  iiiiprovemoiits,  is  well  described  by  Aubrey,  Nat- 
ural History  of  Wiltshire,  1685. 

!•  Sprat's  History  of  the  Koyal  Society. 
vou  I.  2a 


450  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  HI. 

tic,  the  liumble  but  indispensable  handmaid  of  politi- 
cal philosophy.  No  kingdom  of  nature  was  left  un- 
explored. To  that  period  belong  the  chemical  discov- 
eries of  Boyle,  and  the  earliest  botanical  researches  of 
Sloane.  It  was  then  that  Ray  made  a  new  classifica- 
tion of  birds  and  fishes,  and  that  the  attention  of  Wood- 
ward was  first  drawn  towards  fossils  and  shells.  One 
after  another  phantoms  which  had  haunted  the  world 
through  ages  of  darkness  fled  before  the  light.  Astrol- 
ogy and  alchymy  became  jests.  Soon  there  was  scarce- 
ly a  county  in  which  some  of  the  Quorum  did  not  smile 
contemptuously  when  an  old  woman  was  brought  before 
them  for  riding  on  broomsticks  or  giving  cattle  the 
murrain.  But  it  was  in  those  noblest  and  most  ardu- 
ous departments  of  knowledge  in  which  induction  and 
mathematical  demonstration  cooperate  for  the  discov- 
ery of  truth,  that  the  English  genius  won  in  that  age 
the  most  memorable  triumphs.  John  WalUs  placed 
the  whole  system  of  statics  on  a  new  foundation.  Ed- 
mund Halley  investigated  the  properties  of  the  atmos- 
phere, the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  sea,  the  laws  of  mag- 
netism, and  the  course  of  the  comets  ;  nor  did  he  shrink 
from  toil,  peril,  and  exile  in  the  cause  of  science. 
While  he,  on  the  rock  of  Saint  Helena,  mapped  the 
constellations  of  the  southern  hemisphere,  our  national 
observatory  was  rising  at  Greenwich  ;  and  John  Flam- 
steed,  the  first  astronomer  royal,  Avas  commencing  that 
long  series  of  observations  which  is  never  mentioned 
without  respect  and  gratitude  in  any  part  of  the  globe. 
But  the  glory  of  these  men,  eminent  as  they  were,  is 
cast  into  the  shade  by  the  transcendent  lustre  of  one 
immortal  name.  In  Isaac  Newton  two  kinds  of  intel- 
lectual power,  which  have  little  in  common,  and  which 
are  not  often  found  together  in  a  very  high  degree  of 


II 


Ob.  III.]  STATE   OP   ENOLAND   TN   1685.  4^1 

vigour,  but  which  nevertheless  are  equally  necessary 
in  the  most  sublhne  departments  of  physics,  were 
united  as  they  have  never  been  united  before  or  since. 
There  may  have  been  minds  as  happily  constituted  as 
his  for  the  cultivation  of  pure  mathematical  science  ; 
there  may  have  been  minds  as  happily  constituted  for 
the  cultivation  of  science  purely  experimental :  but  in 
no  other  mind  have  the  demonstrative  faculty  and  the 
inductive  faculty  coexisted  in  such  supreme  excellence 
and  perfect  harmony.  Perhaps  in  an  age  of  Scotists 
and  Thomists  even  his  intellect  mio;ht  have  run  to 
waste,  as  many  intellects  ran  to  waste  which  were 
inferior  only  to  his.  Happily  the  spirit  of  the  age  on 
which  his  lot  was  cast,  gave  the  right  direction  to  his 
mind ;  and  his  mind  reacted  with  tenfold  force  on  the 
spirit  of  the  age.  In  the  year  1685  his  fame,  though 
splendid,  was  only  dawning ;  but  his  genius  was  in  the 
meridian.  His  great  work,  that  work  which  effected 
a  revolution  in  the  most  important  provinces  of  natural 
philosophy,  had  been  completed,  but  was  not  yet  pub- 
lished, and  was  just  about  to  be  submitted  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  Royal  Society. 

It  is  not  very  easy  to  explain  why  the  nation  which 
was  so  far  before  its  neighbours  in  science  state  of  the 
should  in  art  have  been  far  behind  them  all.  *"'"""''• 
Yet  such  was  the  fact.  It  is  true  that  in  architecture, 
an  art  which  is  half  a  science,  an  art  in  which  none  but 
a  geometrician  can  excel,  an  art  which  has  no  standard 
of  grace  but  what  is  directly  or  indirectly  dependent 
on  utility,  an  art  of  which  the  creations  derive  a  part, 
at  least,  of  their  majesty  from  mere  bulk,  our  country 
could  boast  of  one  truly  great  man,  Christopher  AVren  ; 
and  the  fire  Avhich  laid  London  in  ruins  had  given  him 
an  opportunity,  unprecedented  in  modern  histoiy,  of 


452  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

displaying  liis  })owe.rs.  The  austere  beauty  of  the 
Athenian  portico,  the  gloomy  sublimity  of  the  Gothic 
arcade,  he  was,  like  almost  all  his  contemporaries,  in- 
capable of  emulating,  and  perhaps  incapable  of  appre- 
ciating :  but  no  man,  born  on  our  side  of  the  Alps,  has 
imitated  with  so  much  success  the  mao-nificence  of  the 
palacelike  churches  of  Italy.  Even  the  superb  Lewis 
has  left  to  posterity  no  work  Avhich  can  bear  a  com- 
parison with  Saint  Paul's.  But  at  the  close  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  the  Second  there  was  not  a  single 
English  painter  or  statuary  whose  name  is  now  re- 
membered. This  sterility  is  somewhat  mysterious ; 
for  painters  and  statuaries  were  by  no  means  a  de- 
spised or  an  ill  paid  class.  Their  social  position  was 
at  least  as  high  as  at  present.  Their  gains,  when  com- 
pared with  the  wealth  of  the  nation  and  with  the  re- 
muneration of  other  descriptions  of  intellectual  labour, 
were  even  larger  than  at  present.  Indeed  the  munifi- 
cent patronage  which  was  extended  to  artists  drew 
them  to  our  shores  in  multitudes.  Lely,  who  has  pre- 
served to  us  the  rich  curls,  the  full  lips,  and  the  lan- 
guishing eyes  of  the  frail  beauties  celebrated  by  Ham- 
ilton, was  a  Westphalian.  He  had  died  in  1680,  having 
long  lived  splendidly,  having  received  the  honour  of 
knighthood,  and  having  accumulated  a  good  estate  out 
of  the  fruits  of  his  skill.  His  noble  collection  of  draw- 
ings and  pictures  was,  after  his  decease,  exhibited  by 
the  royal  permission  in  the  Banqueting  House  at 
Whitehall,  and  was  sold  by  auction  for  the  almost  in- 
credible sum  of  twenty-six  thousand  pounds,  a  sum 
which  bore  a  greater  proportion  to  the  fortunes  of  the 
rich  men  of  that  day  than  a  hundred  thousand  pounds 
would  bear  to  the  fortunes  of  the  rich  men  of  our  time.^ 

1  Walpole's  Anecdotes  of  Painting.      London   Gazette,  May  31.  1683i 
North's  Life  of  Guildford. 


Ch.  m  ]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  453 

Lely  was  succeeded  by  his  countryman  Godfi'ey  Knel- 
ler,  who  was  made  first  a  knight  and  then  a  baronet, 
and  who,  after  keeping  up  a  sumptuous  estabhshment, 
and  after  losing  mu(;h  money  by  unhicky  speculations, 
was  still  able  to  bequeath  a  large  fortune  to  liis  family. 
The  two  Vandeveldes,  natives  of  Holland,  had  been 
tempted  by  English  liberality  to  settle  here,  and  had 
produced  for  the  King  and  his  nobles  some  of  the  finest 
sea  pieces  in  the  world.  Another  Dutchman,  Simon 
Varelst,  painted  glorious  sunflowers  and  tulips  for  prices 
such  as  had  never  before  been  known.  Verrio,  a  Nea- 
politan, covered  ceilings  and  staircases  with  Gorgons 
and  Muses,  Nymphs  and  Satyrs,  Virtues  and  Vices, 
Gods  quaffing  nectar,  and  laurelled  princes  riding  in 
triumph.  The  income  which  he  derived  from  his  per- 
formances enabled  him  to  keep  one  of  the  most  ex- 
pensive tables  in  England.  For  his  pieces  at  Windsor 
alone  he  received  seven  thousand  pounds,  a  sum  then 
sufficient  to  make  a  gentleman  of  moderate  wishes 
perfectly  easy  for  life,  a  sum  greatly  exceeding  all 
that  Dryden,  during  a  literary  life  of  forty  years,  ob- 
tained from  the  booksellers.^  Verrio's  chief  assistant 
and  successor,  Lewis  Laguerre,  came  from  France. 
The  two  most  celebrated  sculptors  of  that  day  were 
also  foreigners.  Gibber,  whose  pathetic  emblems  of 
Fury  and  Melancholy  still  adorn  Bedlam,  was  a  Dane. 
Gibbons,  to  whose  graceful  fancy  and  delicate  touch 
many  of  our  palaces,  colleges,  and  churches  owe  their 
finest  decorations,  was  a  Dutchman.  Even  the  designs 
for  the  coin  were  made  by  French  artists.  Indeed,  it 
was  not  till  the  reign  of  George  the  Second  that  our 
country  could  glory  in  a  great  painter ;  and  George  the 

1  The  great  prices  paid  to  Varelst  and  Verrio  are  mentioned  in  Wal 
pole's  Anecdotes  of  Painting. 


454  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Gh.  III. 

Third  was  on  the  throne  before  she  had  reason  to  be 
proud  of  any  of  her  sculptors. 

It  is  time  that  this  description  of  the  England  which 
Charles  the  Second  governed  should  draw  to  a  close. 
Yet  one  subject  of  the  highest  moment  still  remains 
untouched.  Nothing  has  as  yet  been  said  of  the  great 
body  of  the  people,  of  those  who  held  the  ploughs,  who 
tended  the  oxen,  who  toiled  at  the  looms  of  Norwich 
and  squared  the  Portland  stone  for  Saint  Paul's.  Nor 
can  veiy  much  be  said.  The  most  numerous  class  is 
precisely  the  class  respecting  which  we  have  the  most 
meagre  information.  In  those  times  philanthropists 
did  not  yet  regard  it  as  a  sacred  duty,  nor  had  dema- 
gogues yet  found  it  a  lucrative  trade,  to  talk  and  write 
about  the  distress  of  the  labourer.  History  was  too 
much  occupied  with  courts  and  camps  to  spare  a  line  for 
the  hut  of  the  peasant  or  for  the  garret  of  the  mechanic. 
The  press  now  often  sends  forth  in  a  day  a  greater 
quantity  of  discussion  and  declamation  about  the  con- 
dition of  the  working  man  than  was  published  during 
the  twenty- eight  years  which  elapsed  between  the 
Restoration  and  the  Revolution.  But  it  would  be  a 
great  error  to  infer  from  the  increase  of  complaint  that 
there  has  been  any  increase  of  misery. 

The  great  criterion  of  the  state  of  the  common  people 
sute  of  the    is  the  amount  of  their  wages  ;  and,  as  four 

common  n  <^  i  p    i  i  •         i 

people.  tilths  or  the  common  people  were,  m  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  employed  in  agriculture,  it  is  espe- 
cially important  to  ascertain  what  were  then  the  wages 
of  agricultural  industry.  On  this  subject  we  have  the 
means  of  arriving  at  conclusions  sufficiently  exact  foi 
our  purpose. 

Sir  William  Petty,  whose  mere  assertion 

AjfTicultural  _  .  . 

wages.  carries  great  weight,  informs  us  that  a  labourer 


Ch.  III.]  STATE  OF   ENGLAND   IN    1685.  455 

was  by  no  means  in  the  lowest  state  who  received  for  a 
day's  work  fourpence  with  food,  or  eightpence  without 
food.  Four  shilHngs  a  week  therefore  were,  according 
to  Petty's  calculation,  fair  agricultural  wages. ^ 

That  this  calculation  was  not  remote  from  the  truth 
we  have  abundant  proof.  About  the  beginning  of  the 
year  1685  the  Justices  of  Warwickshire,  in  the  exercise 
of  a  power  entrusted  to  them  by  an  act  of  Elizabeth, 
fixed,  at  their  quarter  sessions,  a  scale  of  wages  for  the 
county,  and  notified  that  every  employer  who  gave  more 
than  the  authorised  sum,  and  every  Avorking  man  who 
received  more,  would  be  liable  to  punishment.  The 
wages  of  the  common  agricultural  labourer,  from  March 
to  September,  were  fixed  at  the  precise  sum  mentioned 
by  Petty,  namely  four  shilHngs  a  week  without  food. 
From  September  to  March  the  wages  were  to  be  only 
three  and  sixpence  a  week.'^ 

But  in  that  age,  as  in  ours,  the  earnings  of  the  peas- 
ant were  very  different  in  different  parts  of  the  kingdom. 
The  wages  of  Warwickshire  were  probably  aljout  tlie 
average,  and  those  of  the  counties  near  the  Scottish 
border  below  it :  but  there  were  more  favoured  dis- 
tricts. In  the  same  year,  1685,  a  gentleman  of  Devon- 
shire, named  Richard  Dunning,  publislied  a  small  tract, 
in  which  he  des('ribed  the  condition  of  the  poor  of  that 
county.  That  he  understood  his  subject  well  it  is  im- 
possible to  doubt ;  for  a  few  months  later  his  work  was 
reprinted,  and  was,  by  the  magistrates  assembled  in 
quarter  sessions  at  Exeter,  strongly  recommended  to 
the  attention  of  all  parochial  officers.  According  to 
him,  the  wages  of  the  Devonshire  peasant  were,  with- 
out food,  about  five  shillinfis  a  week.'^ 

1  I'etty's  Political  Arithmetic. 

2  Stat.  5  Eliz.  c.  4.     Arcliirologia,  vol.  xi. 

•  Plain  aud  easy  Method  showing  how  the  Oftice  of  Overseer  of  the  Pooi 


456  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  in. 

Still  better  was  the  condition  of  the  labourer  in  the 
neio-hbourliood  of  Burv  St.  Edmund's.  Tlie  mao-istrates 
of  Suffolk  met  there  in  the  spring  of  1682  to  fix  a  rate 
of  wages,  and  resolved  that,  where  the  labourer  w^as  not 
boarded,  he  should  have  five  shilhngs  a  week  in  winter, 
and  six  in  summer.^ 

In  1661  the  justices  at  Chelmsford  had  fixed  the 
wages  of  the  Essex  labourer,  who  was  not  boarded,  at 
six  shillings  in  winter  and  seven  in  summer.  Tliis 
seems  to  have  been  the  highest  remuneration  given  in 
the  kingdom  for  agricultural  labour  between  the  Res- 
toi'ation  and  the  Revolution  ;  and  it  is  to  be  observed 
that,  in  the  year  in  which  this  order  was  made,  the 
necessaries  of  life  were  immoderately  dear.  Wheat  was 
at  seventy  shillings  the  quarter,  which  MJ^ould  even  now 
be  considered  as  almost  a  lamine  price.^ 

These  facts  are  in  perfect  accordance  with  another 
fact  which  seems  to  deserve  consideration.  It  is  evident 
that,  in  a  country  w^here  no  man  can  be  compelled  to 
become  a  soldier,  the  ranks  of  an  army  cannot  be  filled 
if  the  government  offers  much  less  than  the  wages  of 
common  rustic  labour.  At  present  the  pay  and  beer 
money  of  a  private  in  a  regiment  of  the  line  amount  to 
seven  shillings  and  sevenpence  a  week.  This  stipend, 
coupled  with  the  hope  of  a  pension,  does  not  attract  the 
English  youth  in  sufficient  numbers ;  and  it  is  found 
necessary  to  supply  the  deficiency  by  enlisting  largely 
from  among  the  poorer  population  of  Mvinster  and  Con- 
naught,  The  pay  of  the  private  foot  soldier  in  1685 
was  only  four  shillings  and  eightpence  a  week ;  yet  it  is 
certain  that  the  government  in  that  year  found  no  diffi- 

ma}-  be  managed,  by  Richard  Dunning;  Ist  edition,  1G85 ;  2d   editioa 
1686. 

1  Cullum  8  History  of  Hawsted. 

2  Ruggles  on  the  Poor. 


Ch.  III-l  STATE   OF   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  457 

culty  in  obtaining  many  thousands  of  English  recruits  at 
very  short  notice.  The  pay  of*  the  private  foot  soldier 
in  the  army  of  the  Commonwealth  had  been  seven  shil- 
lings a  week,  that  is  to  say,  as  much  as  a  corporal  re- 
ceived under  Charles  the  Second  :  ^  and  seven  shillino-s 
a  week  had  been  found  sufficient  to  fill  the  ranks  with 
men  decidedly  superior  to  the  generality  of  the  people. 
On  the  whole,  therefore,  it  seems  reasonable  to  conclude 
tliat,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  the  ordinary 
wages  of  the  peasant  did  not  exceed  four  shillings  a 
week  ;  but  that,  in  some  parts  of  the  kingdom,  five  shil- 
lings, six  shillings,  and,  during  the  summer  months, 
even  seven  shillings  Avere  paid.  At  present  a  district 
where  a  labourino;  man  earns  only  seven  shillincrs  a 
week  is  thought  to  be  in  a  state  shocking  to  humanity. 
The  average  is  very  much  higher ;  and,  in  prosperous 
counties,  the  weekly  wages  of  husbandmen  amount  to 
twelve,  fourteen,  and  even  sixteen  shillino-s. 

The  rem\ineration  of  workmen  employed  in  manu- 
factures has  always  been  higher  than  that  of  AVasesof 
the  tillers  of  the  soil.  In  the  year  1680,  a  crs. 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons  remarked  that  the 
higli  wages  paid  in  this  country  made  it  impossible  for 
our  textures  to  maintain  a  competition  with  the  produce 
of  the  Indian  looms.  An  Eno;lish  mechanic,  he  said,  in- 
stead  of  slaving  like  a  native  of  Bengal  for  a  piece  of 
copper,  exacted  a  shilling  a  day.^  Other  evidence  ia 
extant,  which  proves  that  a  shilling  a  day  was  the  pay 
to  which  the  English  manufacturer  then  thought  him- 
self entitled,  but  that  he  was  often  forced  to  work  for 
less.     Tlie  common  people  of  that  age  were  not  in  the 

1  Si'c,  ill  ■riiuilcif's  State  Papers,  the  memorandum  of  the  Dutch  Depu- 
ties, (laled  Aiifi-ust    a^.  105.1. 

'■^  Tlie  orator  was  Mr.  .lolm  Basset,  member  for  Bariistai)le.  See  Smith's 
Memoirs  of  Wool,  chapter  Ixviii. 


458  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  III. 


fe' 


habit  of  meeting  for  public  discussion,  of  haranguing, 
or  of  petitioning  Parliament.  No  newspaper  pleaded 
their  cause.  It  was  in  rude  rliyme  that  their  love  and 
hatred,  their  exultation  and  their  distress  found  utter- 
ance. A  great  part  of  their  history  is  to  be  learned 
only  from  their  ballads.  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  the  popular  lays  chaunted  about  the  streets  of  Nor- 
wich and  Leeds  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second  may 
still  be  read  on  the  original  broadside.  It  is  the  vehe- 
ment and  bitter  cry  of  labour  against  capital.  It  de- 
scribes the  good  old  times  when  every  artisan  employed 
in  the  woollen  manufacture  lived  as  well  as  a  farmer. 
But  those  times  were  past.  Sixpence  a  day  was  now 
all  that  could  be  earned  by  hard  labour  at  the  loom. 
If  the  poor  complained  that  they  could  not  live  on  such 
a  pittance,  they  were  told  that  they  were  free  to  take  it 
or  leave  it.  For  so  miserable  a  recompense  were  the 
producers  of  wealth  compelled  to  toil,  rising  early  and 
lying  down  late,  while  the  master  clothier,  eating,  sleep- 
ing, and  idling,  became  rich  by  their  exertions.  A  shil- 
ling a  day,  the  poet  declai'es,  is  what  the  weaver  would 
have,  if  justice  were  done.^  We  may  therefore  con- 
clude that,  in  the  generation  which  preceded  the  Revo- 

1  This  ballad  is  in  the  British  Museum.     The  precise  year  is  not  given; 

but  the  Imprimatur  of  Roger  Lestrange  fixes  the  date  sufficiently  for  my 

pui-pose.    I  will  quote  some  of  the  lines.    The  master  clothier  is  iDtroduced 

speaking  as  follows:  — 

"In  former  ages  we  used  to  give, 
So  that  our  workfolks  like  farmers  did  live  ; 
But  tlie  times  are  changed,  we  will  make  them  know. 


We  will  make  them  to  work  hard  for  sixpence  a  day, 

Though  a  shilling  they  deserve  if  they  had  their  just  pay  ; 

If  at  all  they  murmur  and  say  't  is  too  small, 

We  bid  them  choose  whether  they  '11  work  at  all. 

And  thus  we  do  gain  all  our  wealth  and  estate, 

By  many  poor  men  that  work  early  and  late. 

Then  hey  for  the  clothing  trade  1     It  goes  on  brave ; 

We  scorn  for  to  tnyl  and  uioyl,  nor  yet  to  slave. 

Our  workmen  do  work  hard,  but  we  live  at  ease. 

We  go  when  we  will,  and  we  come  when  we  pleas*." 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OP  ENGLAND   IN    1685.  469 

lution,  a  workman  employed  in  the  great  staple  manu- 
facture of  England  thought  himself  fairly  paid  if  he 
gained  six  shillings  a  week. 

It  may  here  be  noticed  that  the  practice  of  setting 
children  prematurely  to  work,  a  practice  which  Labour  of 

,  1  I        .   .  n      1  children  in 

tlie  state,  the  legitnnate  protector  oi  tiiose  factories, 
who  cannot  protect  themselves,  has,  in  our  time,  wisely 
and  humanely  interdicted,  prevailed  in  the  seventeenth 
century  to  an  extent  which,  when  compared  with  the 
extent  of  the  manufacturing  system,  seems  almost  in- 
credible. At  Norwich,  the  chief  seat  of  the  clothing 
trade,  a  little  creature  of  six  years  old  was  thought  fit 
for  labour.  Several  writers  of  that  time,  and  among 
them  some  who  were  considered  as  eminently  benev- 
olent, mention,  with  exultation,  the  fact  that  in  that 
single  city  boys  and  girls  of  very  tender  age  ci'eated 
wealth  exceeding  what  was  necessaiy  for  their  own 
subsistence  by  twelve  thousand  pounds  a  year.^  The 
more  carefully  we  examine  the  history  of  the  past,  the 
more  reason  shall  we  find  to  dissetit  from  those  who 
imagine  that  our  age  has  been  fruitful  of  new  social 
evils.  The  truth  is  that  the  evils  are,  with  scarcely 
an  exce])tion,  old.  That  which  is  new  is  the  intelli- 
gence which  discerns  and  the  humanity  which  remedies 
them. 

When  we  pass  from  the  weavers  of  cloth  to  a  diffei- 
ent  class  of  artisans,  our  inquiries  will  still  wages  of  dif- 
lead  us  to  nearly  the  same  conclusions.  Dur-  of  artisans. 
ing  several  generations,  the  Commissioners  of  Green- 
wich Hospital  have  kept  a  register  of  the  wages  paid 
to  different  classes  of  workmen   wiio  have  been  em- 

1  Cliainherlayne'.s  State  of  EiiKland;  Petty's  Political  Arithmetic,  chap- 
ter viii.;  Dunning's  Plain  and  Eas3-  Method;  Firniin's  Proposition  for  the 
Employing  of  the  Poor.  It  ought  to  be  observed  that  Firniiu  was  au  emi- 
nent philanthropist. 


460  H-ISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IU. 

ployed  in  the  repairs  of  the  building.  From  this  valu- 
able record  it  appears  that,  in  the  course  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty  years,  the  daily  earnings  of  the  bricklayer 
have  risen  from  half  a  crown  to  four  and  tenpence, 
those  of  the  mason  from  half  a  crown  to  five  and  three- 
jience,  those  of  the  carpenter  from  half  a  crown  to  five 
and  fivepence,  and  those  of  the  plumber  from  three 
shillings  to  five  and  sixpence. 

It  seems  clear,  therefore,  that  the  wages  of  labour, 
estimated  in  money,  were,  in  1685,  not  more  than  half 
of  what  they  now  are  ;  and  there  were  few  articles  im- 
portant to  the  working  man  of  which  the  pi'ice  was  not, 
in  1685,  more  than  half  of  what  it  now  is.  Beer  was 
undoubtedly  much  cheaper  in  that  age  than  at  present. 
Meat  was  also  cheaper,  but  was  still  so  dear  that  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  families  scarcely  knew  the  taste 
of  it.^  In  the  cost  of  wheat  there  has  been  very  little 
change.  The  average  price  of  the  quarter,  during  the 
last  twelve  years  of  Charles  the  Second,  was  fifty  shil- 
lings. Bread,  therefore,  such  as  is  now  given  to  the 
inmates  of  a  workhouse,  was  then  seldom  seen,  even  on 
the  trencher  of  a  yeoman  or  of  a  shopkeeper.  The 
great  majority  of  the  nation  lived  almost  entirely  on 
rye,  barley,  and  oats. 

The  produce  of  tropical  countries,  the  produce  of  the 
mines,  tlie  produce  of  machinery,  was  positively  dearer 
than  at  present.  Among  the  commodities  for  which 
the  labourer  Avould  have  had  to  pay  higher  in  1685 
than  his  posterity  now  pay  were  sugar,  salt,  coals, 
candles,  soap,  shoes,  stockings,  and  generally  all  articles 
of  clothing  and  all  articles  of  bedding.    It  may  be  added, 

1  King  ill  his  Natural  and  Political  Conclusions  roughly  estimated  the 
common  people  of  England  at  880.000  families.  Of  these  families  440,000, 
according  to  him,  ate  animal  food  twice  a  week.  The  remaining  440,000 
ate  it  not  at  all,  or  at  most  not  oftener  than  oace  a  week 


Ch.  III.]  STATE   OF   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  461 

that  the  old  coats  and  hlankets  would  have  been,  not 
only  more  costly,  but  less  serviceable  than  the  modern 
fabrics. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  those  labourers  who 
were  able  to  maintain  themselves  and  their  Number  of 
families  by  means  of  wao;es  were  not  tlie  most  p'^"?'^'^*- 
necessitous  members  of  the  community.  Beneath  them 
lay  a  large  class  whicli  could  not  subsist  without  some 
aid  from  the  parish.  Tliere  can  hardly  be  a  more  im- 
jDortant  test  of  the  condition  of  the  common  people  than 
the  ratio  which  this  class  bears  to  the  whole  society. 
At  present  the  men,  women,  and  cliildren  who  receive 
relief  appear  from  the  official  returns  to  be,  in  bad  years, 
one  tenth  of  the  inlialntants  of  England,  and,  in  good 
years,  one  thirteenth.  Gregory  King  estimated  tliem 
in  liis  time  at  about  a  fourth  ;  and  this  estimate,  whicli 
all  our  respect  for  his  authority  will  scarcely  prevent 
us  from  calling  extravagant,  was  pronounced  by  Dave- 
nant  eminently  judicious. 

We  are  not  quite  without  the  means  of  forming  an 
estimate  for  ourselves.  The  poor  rate  was  undoubtedly 
the  heaviest  tax  borne  by  our  ancestors  in  those  days. 
It  was  computed,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second, 
at  near  seven  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year,  much 
more  than  the  produce  either  of  the  excise  or  of  the 
customs,  and  little  less  than  half  the  entire  revenue  of 
the  crown.  The  poor  rate  went  on  increasing  rapidly, 
and  appears  to  have  risen  in  a  short  time  to  between 
eight  and  nine  luuidred  thousand  a  year,  that  is  to  say, 
to  one  sixth  of  what  it  now  is.  The  population  was 
then  less  than  a  third  of  what  it  now  is.  The  minimum 
of  wages,  estimated  in  money,  was  half  of  what  it  now 
is  ;  and  we  can  therefore  hardly  suppose  that  the  aver- 
age allowance  made  to  a  pauper  can  have  been  more 


462  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IH. 

than  half  of  wliat  it  now  is.  It  seems  to  follow  that 
the  proportion  of  the  English  jDeople  Avhich  received 
parochial  relief  then  must  have  been  larger  than  the 
proportion  which  receives  relief  now.  It  is  good  to 
speak  on  such  questions  with  diffidence  :  but  it  has  cer- 
tainly never  yet  been  proved  that  pauperism  was  a  less 
heavy  burden  or  a  less  serious  social  evil  during  the  last 
quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  than  it  is  in  our  own 
time.i 

In  one  respect  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  progress 
of  civilisation  has  diminished  the  physical  comforts  of  a 
portion  of  the  poorest  class.  It  has  already  been  men- 
tioned that,  before  the  Revolution,  many  thousands  of 
square  miles,  now  inclosed  and  cultivated,  were  marsh, 
forest,  and  heath.  Of  this  wild  land  much  was,  by  law, 
common,  and  much  of  what  was  not  common  by  law 
was  worth  so  little  that  the  proprietors  suflPered  it  to  be 
common  in  fact.  In  such  a  tract,  squatters  and  tres- 
passers were  tolerated  to  an  extent  now  unknown.  The 
peasant  who  dwelt  there  could,  at  little  or  no  charge, 
procure  occasionally  some  palatable  addition  to  his  hard 
fare,  and  provide  himself  with  ftael  for  the  Avinter.  He 
kept  a  flock  of  geese  on  wdiat  is  now  an  orchard  rich 

1  Fourteenth  Report  of  the  Poor  Law  Commissioners,  Appendix  B.  No. 
2.  Appendix  C.  No.  1.  1848.  Of  the  two  estimates  of  the  poor  rate  men- 
tioned in  the  text  one  was  formed  by  Arthur  Jloore,  the  other,  some  years 
later,  by  Rii-bard  Dunning.  Moore's  estimate  will  be  found  in  Davenant's 
Kssa}- on  Ways  and  Means;  Dunning's  in  Sir  Frederic  Eden's  valuable 
work  on  the  poor.  King  and  Davenant  estimate  the  paupers  and  beg- 
gars in  169G,  at  the  incredible  number  of  1,330,000  out  of  a  population  of 
5..5n0,000.  Tn  184G  the  number  of  persons  who  received  relief  appears  from 
the  official  returns  to  have  been  only  1,3-32,089  out  of  a  population  of  about 
17,000,000.  It  ought  also  to  be  observed  that,  in  those  returns,  a  pauper 
mast  very  often  be  reckoned  more  than  once. 

I  would  advise  the  reader  to  consult  De  Foe's  pamphlet  entitled  "  Giv- 
ing Alms  no  Charity,"  and  the  Greenwich  tables  wliich  will  be  found  in 
Mr.  McCulloch's  Commercial  Dictionary  under  the  head  Prices. 


Ua.  III.]  STATE   OP    ENGLAND    IN    1685.  463 

with  apple  blossoms.  He  snared  wild  fowl  on  the  fen 
which  has  long  since  been  drained  and  divided  into  coi-n 
tiekls  and  tnrnip  fields.  He  cut  turf  among  the  furze 
bushes  on  the  moor  wliich  is  now  a  meadow  bright  with 
clover  and  renowned  for  butter  and  cheese.  The  ])rog- 
ress  of  agriculture  and  the  increase  of  population  neces- 
sarily deprived  him  of  these  privileges.  But  against, 
this  disadvantage  a  long  list  of  advantages  is  i>e„efirsde- 
to  be  set  off.  Of  the  blessings  which  civilisa-  eommon  Jeo- 
tion  and  philosophy  bring  with  tliem  a  large  pJ.'^  *re«  of'^ 
proportion  is  common  to  all  ranks,  and  would,  "'TiUsatiou. 
if  withdrawn,  be  missed  as  painfully  by  the  labourer  as 
by  the  peer.  Tiie  market  place  which  the  rustic  can 
noAv  reach  with  his  cart  in  an  hoiu'  was,  a  hundred 
and  sixty  years  ago,  a  day's  journey  from  him.  The 
street  which  now  affords  to  the  artisan,  during  the 
whole  night,  a  secure,  a  convenient,  and  a  brilliantly 
lighted  walk  was,  a  hinidrcd  and  sixty  years  a^o,  so  dark 
after  sunset  that  he  would  not  have  been  able  to  see  his 
hand,  so  ill  paved  that  he  would  have  run  constant  risk 
of  breaking  his  neck,  and  so  ill  watched  that  he  would 
have  been  in  imminent  danger  of  being  knocked  down 
and  plundered  of  his  small  earnings.  Every  bricklayer 
who  falls  from  a  scaffold,  every  sweeper  of  a  crossing 
who  is  run  over  by  a  can-iage,  may  now  have  his  wounds 
dressed  and  his  limbs  set  with  a  skill  such  as,  a  hundred 
and  sixty  years  ago,  all  the  wealth  of  a  great  lord  like 
Ormond,  or  of  a  merchant  prince  like  Clayton,  could 
not  have  ])urchased.  Some  frightful  diseases  have  been 
extirpated  l)y  science  ;  and  some  have  been  banished  by 
police.  The  term  of  human  life  has  been  lengthened 
over  the  whole  kingdom,  and  es])ecially  in  the  towns. 
The  year  1685  was  not  accounted  sickly  ;  yet  in  the 
year  1685  more  than  one  in  twenty-three  of  the  in- 


404  IIISTOUY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IlL 

habitants  of  the  capital  cliecl.^  At  present  only  one  in- 
habitant of  the  capital  in  forty  dies  annually.  The  dif- 
ference in  salubrity  between  the  London  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  the  London  of  the  seventeenth 
century  is  very  far  greater  than  the  difference  between 
London  in  an  ordinary  year  and  London  in  a  year 
of  cholera. 

Still  more  important  is  the  benefit  which  all  orders 
of  society,  and  especially  the  lower  orders,  have  derived 
from  the  mollifying  influence  of  civilisation  on  the 
national  character.  The  o-roundwork  of  that  character 
has  indeed  been  the  same  through  many  generations, 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  groundwork  of  the  character 
of  an  individual  may  be  said  to  be  the  same  when  he 
is  a  rude  and  thoughtless  schoolboy  and  when  he  is  a 
refined  and  accomplished  man.  It  is  pleasing  to  reflect 
that  the  public  mind  of  England  has  softened  while  it 
has  ripened,  and  that  we  have,  in  the  course  of  ages, 
become,  not  only  a  wiser,  but  also  a  kinder  people. 
There  is  scarcely  a  page  of  the  history  or  lighter  liter- 
ature of  the  seventeenth  century  which  does  not  con- 
tain some  proof  that  our  ancestors  were  less  humane 
than  their  posterity.  The  discij^line  of  Avorkshops,  of 
schools,  of  private  families,  though  not  more  efficient 
than  at  present,  was  infinitely  harsher.  Masters,  well 
born  and  bred,  were  in  the  habit  of  beating  their  ser- 
vants. Pedagogues  knew  no  way  of  imparting  knowl- 
edge but  by  beating  their  pupils.  Husbands,  of  decent 
station,  were  not  ashamed  to  beat  their  wives.  The 
implacability  of  hostile  factions  was  such  as  we  can 
scarcely  conceive.  Whigs  were  disposed  to  murmur 
because  Stafford  was  suffered  to  die  without  seeing  his 
bowels  burned  before  his  face.     Tories  reviled  and  in- 

1  The  deaths  were  23,222.  —  Petty's  Political  xiiithmetic. 


Ch  III.j  STATE   OP   ENGLAND    IN    1685.  465 

suited  Russell  as  liis  coach  passed  from  the  Tower  to 
the  scatiuld  in  Lhicohi's  Inn  Fields.^  As  little  mercy 
was  shown  by  the  popuhice  to  sutFerers  of  a  humbler 
rank.  If  an  offender  was  put  into  the  pillory,  it  was 
well  if  he  escaped  with  life  from  the  shower  of  brick- 
bats and  paving  stones.^  If  he  was  tied  to  the  cart's 
tail,  tlie  crowd  })ressed  round  him,  imploring  the  hang- 
man to  give  it  the  fellow  well,  and  make  him  howl.^ 
Gentlemen  arranged  parties  of  pleasure  to  Bridewell 
on  court  days,  for  the  purpose  of  seeing  the  wretched 
women  who  beat  hemp  there  wljipped.*  A  man  pressed 
to  death  for  refusing  to  plead,  a  woman  burned  for  coin- 
ing, excited  less  sympathy  than  is  now  felt  for  a  galled 
horse  or  an  overdriven  ox.  Fights  compared  witli 
which  a  boxing  match  is  a  refined  and  humane  spectacle 
were  among  the  favourite  diversions  of  a  large  part  of 
the  town.  Multitudes  assembled  to  see  o-ladiators  hack 
each  other  to  pieces  witli  deadly  weajjons,  and  shouted 
with  delioht  when  one  of  the  combatants  lost  a  finder 
or  an  eye.  The  prisons  were  hells  on  earth,  seminaries 
of  every  crime  and  of  every  disease.  At  the  assizes 
the  lean  and  yellow  culprits  brought  with  them  from 
their  cells  to  the  dock  an  atmosphere  of  stench  and 
pestilence  which  sometimes  avenged  them  signally  on 
bench,  bar,  and  jury.  But  on  all  this  misery  society 
looked  with  profound  indifference.  Nowhere  could  be 
found  that  sensitive  and  restless  compassion  which  has, 
in  our  time,  extended  a  powerful  protection  to  the  fac- 
tory child,  to  the  Hindoo  widow,  to  the  negro  slave, 
which  pries  into  the  stores  and  watercasks  of  every  emi- 

1  Rurnct,  i.  560. 

2  MugKleton's  Acts  of  the  Witnesses  of  the  Spirit. 

8  Tom  Brown  describes  siicii  a  scene  in  lines  which   I  do  not  venture  to 
quote. 
*  Ward's  London  Spy. 
VOL.  I.  30 


466  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IIL 

errant  sliip,  which  winces  at  every  lash  laid  on  the  back 
of  a  drunken  soldier,  which  will  not  suiFer  the  thief  in 
the  hulks  to  be  ill  fed  or  overworked,  and  which  has  re- 
peatedly endeavoured  to  save  the  life  even  of  the  mur- 
derer. It  is  true  that  compassion  ought,  like  all  other 
feelings,  to  be  under  the  government  of  reason,  and  has, 
for  want  of  such  government,  produced  some  ridiculous 
and  some  deplorable  effects.  But  the  more  we  study 
the  annals  of  the  past  the  more  shall  we  rejoice  that 
we  live  in  a  merciful  age,  in  an  age  in  which  cruelty 
is  abhorred,  and  in  whiqh  pain,  even  when  deserved,  is 
inflicted  reluctantly  and  from  a  sense  of  duty.  Every 
class  doubtless  has  gained  largely  by  this  great  moral 
change  :  but  the  class  which  has  gained  most  is  the 
poorest,  the  most  dependent,  and  the  most  defenceless. 
The  general  effect  of  the  evidence  which  has  been 
Delusion        Submitted  to  the  reader  seems  hardly  to  admit 

which  leads  n     i        i  -vr  •  •;  o  •  1 

men  to  over-  of  douot.  1  ct,  \\\  spite  ot  eviclence,  many 
ptness'ofpre-  will  Still  image  to  themselves  the  England  of 
erationf.''"  the  Stuarts  as  a  more  pleasant  country  than 
the  England  in  which  we  live.  It  may  at  first  sight 
seem  strange  that  society,  while  constantly  moving 
forward  with  eager  speed,  should  be  constantly  look- 
ing backward  with  tender  regret.  But  these  two  pro- 
pensities, inconsistent  as  they  may  appear,  can  easily 
be  resolved  into  the  same  principle.  Both  spring  from 
our  impatience  of  the  state  in  which  we  actually  are. 
That  impatience,  while  it  stimulates  us  to  surpass  pre- 
ceding generations,  disposes  us  to  overrate  their  happi- 
ness. It  is,  in  some  sense,  unreasonable  and  ungrateful 
in  us  to  be  constantly  discontented  with  a  condition 
which  is  constantly  improving.  But,  in  truth,  there  is 
constant  improvement  precisely  because  there  is  con- 
stant discontent.     If  we  were  perfectly  satisfied  witli 


Ch.  Ill  J  STATE   OP   ENGLAND   IN   1685.  467 

the  present,  we  should  cease  to  contrive,  to  labour,  and 
to  save  with  a  view  to  the  future.  And  it  is  natural 
that,  being  dissatisfied  with  the  present,  we  should  form 
a  too  favourable  estimate  of  the  past. 

1)1   truth  we  are  under  a  deception   similar  to  that 
which   misleads   the   traveller  in   the  Arabian  desert. 
Beneath  the  caravan  all  is  dry  and  bare :  but  far  in  ad- 
vance, and  far  in  the  rear,  is  the  semblance  of  refresh- 
ing waters.      The   pilgrims    hasten   forward  and   find 
nothing  but  sand  where,  an  hour  before,  they  had  seen 
a  lake.     They  turn  their  eyes  and  see  a  lake  where,  an 
hour  before,  they  were  toiling  through  sand.    A  similar 
illusion  seems  to  haunt  nations  through  every  stage  of 
the  long  progress  from  poverty  and  barbarism  to  the 
highest  degrees  of  opulence  and  civilisation.     But,  if 
we  resolutely  chase  the  mirage  backward,  we  shall  find 
it  recede  before  us  into  the  regions  of  fabulous  antiquity. 
It  is  noAv  the  fashion  to  place  the  golden  age  of  Eng- 
land in  times  when  noblemen  were  destitute  of  com- 
forts the  want  of  which  would  be  intolerable  to  a  modern 
footman,  when  farmers  and  sh()j)keepers  breakfasted  on 
loaves  the  very  sight  of  which  would  raise  a  riot  in  a 
modern  workhouse,  when  to  have  a  clean  shirt  once  a 
week  was  a  privilege  reserved  for  the  higher  class  of 
gentry,  when  men  died  faster  in   the  purest    country 
air  than  they  now  die  in  the  most  pestilential  lanes  of 
our  towns,  and  when  men   died  faster  in  the  lanes  of 
our  towns  than  they  now  die   on  the  coast  of  Guiana. 
We  too  shall,  in  our  turn,  be  outstripi)ed,  and  in  our 
turn  be  envied.     It  may  well  be,  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, that  the  peasant  of  Dorsetshire  may  think  him- 
self miserably  paid  with  filteen   shillings  a  week  ;  that 
the  car})enter  at  Greenwich  may  receive  ten  shillings 
a  day  ;    that  labouring  men  may  be  as  little  used  to 


468  HISTOKY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  III. 

dine  without  meat  as  they  now  are  to  eat  rye  bread ; 
that  sanitary  poHce  and  medical  discoveries  may  hav  ■ 
added  several  more  years  to  the  average  length  of 
human  life ;  that  numerous  comforts  and  luxuries 
which  are  now  unknown,  or  confined  to  a  few,  may  be 
within  the  reach  of  every  diligent  and  thrifty  working 
man.  And  yet  it  may  then  be  the  mode  to  assert  that 
the  increase  of  wealth  and  the  progress  of  science  have 
benefited  the  few  at  the  expense  of  the  many,  and  to 
talk  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  as  the  time  when 
England  was  truly  merry  England,  when  ali  classes 
were  bound  together  by  brotherly  sympathy,  when  the 
rich  did  not  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor,  and  when  the 
poor  did  not  envy  the  splendour  of  the  rich.' 

1  During  the  interval  which  has  elapsed  since  this  chapter  was  written, 
England  has  continued  to  advance  rapidly  in  material  prosperity.  I  li;ive 
lel't  my  text  nearly  as  it  originally  stood;  but  I  have  added  a  few  nott-s 
which  may  enable  the  reader  to  form  some  notion  of  the  progress  which 
has  been  made  during  the  last  nine  years;  and,  in  general,  I  would  desire 
liim  to  remember  that  there  is  scarcely  a  district  which  is  not  more  pcipu- 
lous,  or  a  source  of  wealth  which  is  not  more  productive,  at  present  thao 
ia  1848.     (1857.) 


APPENDIX. 


[The  matter  referred  to  in  the  note  at  the  close  of  the  third  cliap- 
ter  will  be  found  in  this  Appendix,  with  later  statistics.  For  tiie 
notes  enclosed  within  brackets  the  Riverside  edition  is  responsible  ; 
those  not  so  distinguished  are  notes  of  tlie  author.] 

[In   the   month   of  January,  1849,  a  correspondence    cranmerand 
took  place  between  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  and  Mr.  Ma-    ^^e  Church 
caulay  on  certain  statements,  m  the  nrst  chapter  oi  his    pp.  (jo,  m. 
History,  respecting  Archbishop  Crannier  and  the  Church    62,  63. 
of  England.     This  correspondence  originated  in  an  invitation  from 
the  historian  communicated  to  the  Bishop  tlirough  Sir  James  Stephen. 
It  was  first  published  in  1801  by  Mr.  Murray. 

In  his  first  letter,  the  Bishop  bears  testimony  to  the  extraordinary 
merits  of  Mr.  Macaulay's  History,  among  Avhicli  he  considers  tlie 
greatest  its  unequalled  trutlifuhicss.  He  again  alludes  to  it  as  a 
work  which  will  be  preeminently  the  guide  and  instruction  of  future 
generations  of  Englishmen.  In  a  subsequent  letter  tlie  Bishop 
assigns  as  a  reason  for  further  trespassing  on  the  historian's  patience 
simply  and  merely  the  incalculable  importance  which  he  attributes 
to  the  statements  to  which  ]Mr.  Macaulay  shall  permanently  ailhere 
in  his  History.  Yet  again,  in  his  third  letter,  the  Bishop  disclaims 
any  other  than  the  most  respectful  feelings  to  the  historian  and  his 
immortal  work,  and  laments  to  think  that  in  that  work  should  be 
embalmed  errors  so  grievously  injurious  to  the  Church,  as  those  on 
which  he  presumes  to  comment.  "  Would  that  what  I  have  writ- 
ten," he  adds,  "  may  induce  you  to  look  more  closely  into  the 
various  matters  which  I  have  brought  to  your  attention  !  I  do  not 
flatter  myself  with  the  hope  that  I  can  have  convinced  you.  Hut  I 
shall  have  done  no  light  service  to  the  Church,  and  to  those  who  in 
all  ages  to  come  shall  read  your  '  History '  and  derive  much  of  their 
practical  feeling  towards  that  Church  from  what  they  shall  there 
read,  if  I  am  the  happy  instrument  of  inducing  you  to  convince 
yourself" 

The  statements  to  which  the  Bishop  took  exception  are  sufficiently 
indicated  by  the  replies  of  Mr.  Macaulay  and  the  changes  which  he 
introduced  in  the  subsequent  editions  of  his  work.     These  changei 


470  APPENDIX. 

we  sliall  point  out  in  a  separate  paragraph,  first  presenting  at  length 
the  two  letters  of  the  historian  in  reply  to  the  several  communica- 
tions of  the  Bisliop.  Our  readers  will  thus  be  enabled  to  understand 
the  extent  to  which  Mr.  Macaulay  considered  himself  in  error,  to 
appreciate  the  importance  of  his  corrections  in  the  final  revision  of 
his  text,  and  to  know  that,  as  it  now  stands,  his  great  work  exhibits 
ths  results  of  his  best  reflection  and  his  matured  convictions,  after 
examining  the  works  to  which  the  Bishop  called  his  attention,  and 
carefully  weighing  his  observations. 

No.  I. 

Mr.  Macaulay  to  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Exeter. 

Albany,  London,  January  8,  1849. 

My  Lord,  — 1  beg  you  to  accept  my  thanks  for  your  highly  inter- 
esting letter.  I  have  seldom  been  more  gratified  than  by  your  ap- 
probation ;  and  I  can  with  truth  assure  you  that  I  am  not  solicitous 
to  defend  my  book  against  any  criticisms  to  whicli  it  may  be  justly 
open.  I  liave  undertaken  a  task  which  makes  it  necessary  for  me 
to  treat  of  many  subjects  with  which  it  is  impossible  that  one  man 
should  be  more  than  superficially  acquainted, —  law,  divinity,  mili- 
tary aflairs,  maritime  affairs,  trade,  finance,  manufactures,  letters, 
arts,  sciences.  It  would  therefore  be  the  height  of  folly  and  arro- 
gance in  me  to  receive  ungraciously  suggestions  ofltred  in  a  friendly 
spirit,  by  persons  who  have  studied  profoundly  branches  of  knowl- 
edge to  which  I  have  been  able  to  give  only  a  passing  attention.  I 
should  not,  I  assure  you,  feel  at  all  mortified  or  humbled  at  being 
compelled  to  own  that  I  had  been  set  right  by  an  able  and  learned 
prelate  on  a  question  of  ecclesiastical  history. 

I  really  think,  however,  that  it  is  in  my  power  to  vindicate  myself 
from  the  charge  of  having  misrepresented  the  sentiments  of  the  Eng- 
lish Reformers  concerning  t'hurch  Government. 

Your  Lordship  admits  that  I  have  given  a  correct  account  of  the 
opinions  which  Cranmer  held  in  1-540  touching  the  roj'al  supremacy 
and  the  episcopal  function.  But  you  say  that  he  soon  afterwards 
charged  his  mind,  and  expressed  opinions  very  different ;  and  you 
think  that  I  ought  in  candour  to  have  mentioned  this.  Perhaps  it 
would  have  been  as  well  if  I  had  inserted  the  words  "  at  one  time," 
or  "  on  one  occasion."  But  it  matters  very  little.  I  had  said,  a  few 
lines  before,  that  on  this  class  of  subjects,  the  founders  of  the  An- 
glican Church  were  constantly  changing  their  minds,  that  they  con- 
tradicted each  other,  that  they  contradicted  themselves,  and  that  the 
word  "  supremacy  "  had  very  diflerent  significations  in  the  same 
mouth  at  different  conjunctures.     The  truth  is  that  you  altogether 


APPENDIX.  471 

misapprelicDd  the  use  wliich  I  meant  to  make  of  Cranmei's  answers 
of  1540.  The  fault  is  probablj'  my  own.  I  ought  to  have  made  my 
nieanuig  clearer.  Yet  I  tliiiik  that,  if  you  will  do  me  the  honour  to 
read  again  pages  55,  56,  and  57  of  my  tirst  volunie,i  you  will  see 
tliat  I  never  meant  to  make  the  Churcli  responsible  for  Cranmer's 
vagaries.  I  cited  his  diria,  not  to  prove  what  was  the  genuine  An- 
glican doctrine,  but  to  prove  in  how  unsettled  a  state  the  minds  even 
of  very  eminent  Doctors  were,  in  that  troubled  age,  on  questions  of 
the  utmost  gravity.  I  say  expressly  tliat  this  notion  of  the  suprem- 
acj'  gave  scandal  not  only  to  Papists,  but  also  to  Protestjints ;  and 
I  quote  the  article  by  which  our  Church  contradicts  point  blank 
Cranmer's  main  proposition.  I  persuade  myself  that  your  Lord- 
ship will,  on  reexamination,  acquit  me  of  everything  worse  than 
some  want  of  lucidity. 

I  have  looked  again  at  the  Commission  wliich  Bonner  received 
from  Henry,  and  at  that  which  Cranmer  took  out  after  Henry's 
death;  and  must  own  that  my  opinion  as  to  the  sense  of  these  docu- 
ments remains  unchanged.  Your  Lordsliip  directs  mj-  attention  to 
the  words  "  praeter  et  ultra  ea  quaj  tibi  ex  sacris  Uteris  divinitus 
comniissa  esse  dignoscunlur."  No  doubt  these  wonls  recognise  an 
episcopal  power  derived  from  God.  But  do  they  recognise  an  epis- 
copal ))ower  derived  immediately  from  God  ?  I  think  not.  I  am 
strongly  of  opinion  that  tliose  who  drew  up  these  commissions  lieid 
that  the  episcopal  power  was  derived  from  God  through  tli©  King, 
and  was  to  be  exerciseil  in  subordination  to  the  King  ;  as  your  Lord- 
ship probably  holds  tiiat  the  priestly  power  is  derived  from  God 
through  the  Bishop,  and  is  to  be  exercised  in  subordination  to  tlie 
Bishop.  My  reason  for  tliinking  this  is  that  the  words  quoted  by 
your  Lordsliip  are  immediately  followed  by  these  very  significant 
words,  "  vice,  nomine,  et  auctoritate  nostris  exequendum."  I  really 
believe  that  tiie  sense  of  these  instruments  may  fairly  be  sumir.e*! 
up  tlius  :  —  "Whereas  all  sjiiritu-al  as  well  as  temporal  jurisdiction 
is  derived  from  the  Sovereign,  and  may  be  resumed  by  him,  we 
empower  you  to  ordain,  to  institute,  to  grant  letters  of  administra- 
tion, to  take  cognisance  of  ecclesiastical  oS«?nces,  and  to  perform  all 
functions  which  appear  from  Holy  Writ  to  belong  by  Divine  appoint- 
ment to  Bishops,  as  our  lieutenant,  in  our  name,  by  our  authority, 
and  during  our  pleasure." 

Your  Lordship  says  that  I  ought  to  have  consulted  the  public  Acts 
of  our  Kings  and  of  the  Church,  instead  of  culling  here  and  tiiere 
instances  of  ill-judged  actions  and  expri'ssions  of  jirivate  men.  This 
charge  is  made  in  language  so  kind  and  flattering,  that  I  cannot  com- 
plain of  it.     Yet  I  cannot  pUad  guilty.     For  it  seems  to  me  that  I 

1  pp.  60,  Gl,  02,  68,  fupra. 


472  APPENDIX. 

have  mentioned  three  facts  of  the  highest  importance  which  indicate, 
in  a  manner  not  to  be  mistaken,  the  opinion,  not  of  individuals,  but 
of  the  Church  and  State,  on  the  subject  of  Episcopacy. 

First,  I  have  remarked  that  the  Church  has  not,  in  her  doctrinal 
confessions  and  discourses,  asserted  any  tbrm  of  ecclesiastical  gov- 
ernment to  be  essential  to  the  welfare  of  a  Christian  Society.  This 
is  surely  a  most  important  fact.  It  is  strange  that,  if  the  Church 
really  held  episcopacy  to  be  essential,  not  a  word  should  be  said  on 
that  subject  in  the  19th  Article.  Still  stranger  would  seem  the  lan- 
guage of  the  36th  Article.  The  subject  of  that  Article  is  the  conse- 
cration of  Bishops.  Not  a  word  is  said  about  the  divine  origin  of 
the  ofHce,  or  about  the  necessity  of  the  imposition  of  hands.  It  is 
only  affirmed  that  the  Anglican  form  of  consecration  contains  noth- 
ing that  of  ilsdf  is  superstitious  or  ungodly.  It  is  not  easy  to  take 
lower  ground  than  this.  I  am  convinced  that  half  the  ministers  of 
the  established  Church  of  Scotland  would  have  the  candour  to  admit 
as  much.  The  second  part  of  the  Homily  on  Whitsunday  is  equally 
remarkable.  Three  notes  of  a  true  Church  are  given,  but  not  a 
word  about  episcopacy.  I  had  mentioned  these  things  in  my  first 
chapter,  but  omitted  them  from  fear  of  prolixity.  I  do  not  wisii  to 
lay  more  stress  on  them  than  is  reasonable.  But  let  me  ask  your 
Lordship  whether  you  think  that  Laud,  or  Sheldon,  or  Ken,  would 
have  drawn  up  such  Articles  and  such  Homilies  1 

Secondly,  I  have  mentioned  the  very  important  circumstance  that, 
till  the  Restoration,  episcopal  ordination  was  not  required  by  law  as 
a  qualification  for  holding  a  cure  of  souls  in  the  Church  of  England. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  your  Lordship  remembers  a  remarkable  pas- 
sage on  this  subject  in  Clarendon's  Life,  ii.  152,  fol.  How  can  I 
believe  that  a  Church  in  which,  during  three  generations,  numerous 
ministers  not  episcopally  ordained  were  admitted  to  the  charge  of 
parishes  can  have  held  episcopal  ordination  essential  to  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  sacraments  ? 

Thirdly,  I  have  mentioned  the  fact  that  James  I.,  as  head  of  the 
Church,  sent  a  Bishop  and  several  priests  to  the  Synod  of  Dort. 
These  divines  joined  in  solemn  acts  of  public  worship  with  ministers 
not  episcopally  ordained,  and  sate  in  council  with  those  ministers  on 
the  gravest  questions  of  theology.  One  of  the  Anglican  Presbyters 
who  was  sent  on  this  embassy  afterwards  became  a  bishop  ;  and  his 
writings  are  highly  esteemed  to  this  day.  He  always  considered 
himself  as  highly  honoured  by  having  been  selected  for  such  a  mis- 
sion, and  spoke  of  himself  as  unworthy  to  form  a  part  of  so  illus- 
trious a  congress.  Imagine  Sancroft  or  South  rising  to  address  the 
Molerator  in  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland. 

I  therefore  cannot  admit  that  I  have  neglected  to  consult  the  pub- 


APPENDIX.  473 

Uc  Acts  of  our  kings  and  of  the  Church.  I  liave,  I  tliink  proved 
from  lho.se  Acts  tliat  there  did  take  phice  in  the  seventeenth  century 
a  very  great  chanj^e  in  the  opinion  of  the  clerical  body,  and  of  thii 
heads  of  that  body,  touching  eccles^iastical  policy.  Your  Lordship, 
I  understand,  admits  tliat  there  was  some  change.  The  difference 
between  us  is  a  difference  of  degree,  and  diflerences  of  degree  are 
not  easily  expressed  with  precision  in  words.  I  do  not,  I  must  own, 
feel  satisfied  that  the  language  which  I  have  used  requires  any  mod- 
ification. But  if  reading  and  reflection  should  lead  me  to  a  different 
opinion,  false  shame  shall  not  prevent  me  from  making  a  public  re- 
tractation. 

I  beg  3'our  Lordship  to  excuse  the  faults  of  this  letter.  It  has 
been  written  in  a  sick-room,  with  considerable  difficulty  and  pain : 
but  I  could  not  delay  my  acknowledgments  for  your  great  kindness 
and  courtesy.  I  have  the  honour  to  be. 

My  Lord,  with  great  respect. 
Your  Lordship's  most  faithful  servant^ 

T.  B.  Macaulat. 

No.  11. 
Mr.  MacaulAy  to  tue  Lokd  Bishop  of  Exeter. 

Albany,  London,  Jan.  22,  1849. 

My  Lord,  — I  should  be  most  ungrateful  if  I  did  not  thankful!}' 
acknowledge  my  obligations  to  your  Lordshij)  for  the  highly  inter- 
esting and  very  friendly  letters  with  wiiich  you  have  lioiKJured  mo. 
Before  another  edition  of  my  book  appears  I  shall  have  time  to 
weigh  your  observations  carefully,  and  to  examine  the  works  to 
which  you  have  called  my  attention.  You  have  convinced  me  of 
the  proi)riety  of  making  some  alterations.  But  1  hope  that  you  will 
not  accuse  me  of  pertinacity  if  I  add  that,  as  far  as  I  can  at  present 
judge,  those  alterations  will  be  slight,  and  that,  on  the  great  points 
in  issue,  my  opinion  is  unchanged. 

I  cannot,  for  example,  see  that  I  was  wrong  in  saying  that  Henry 
considered  himself,  and  was  represented  by  his  favourite  Courtiers, 
as  a  kind  of  Pope,  the  channel  of  Sacramentiil  graces,  and  the  ex- 
positor of  Catholic  verity.  That  he  was  so  represented  by  Cranmer 
in  the  very  remarkable  answers  which  Burnet  published  from  the 
Stillingtleet  MS.,  your  Lordshij)  does  not  deny.  But  you  conceive 
that  this  was  a  notion  peculiar  to  Cranmer,  and  that  even  Cranmer 
held  it  only  for  a  short  time.  Yet  surely  the  i)aper  to  which  I  have 
referred  in  the  Note  to  page  50  of  my  first  volume^  is  to  the  same 
effect     That  paper  was  evidently  meant  as  a  kind  of  brief  for  the 

1  p.  62,  supra. 


474  APPENDIX. 

courtly  part3'  in  the  Convocation.  I  will  give  two  sentences.  "  Thig 
text,  Matt,  xvi.,  Quodcuuque  lii/averitis,  &c.,  gave  authority  to  all  the 
Apostles  jointly  to  make  laws  and  keep  councils,  until  such  time  as 
a  convenient  number  of  the  lay  people  were  converted  to  the  faith; 
and  then  the  said  text  ceased."  "  This  text  of  Actuum  xx.,  Atten- 
dite  vobis  et  iiniverso  ffregi,  in  quo  Spiritus  Sanctus  vos  pomit  Episrojms 
was  not  meant  of  such  Bishops  only  as  be  now  of  the  Clergy,  but 
was  as  well  meant  and  spoken  of  every  ruler  and  governor  of  the 
Christian  people."  Strype  believed  tliis  paper  to  be  in  the  hand- 
writing of  Gardiner ;  and  this  is  a  very  significant  circumstance ; 
for  as  tiie  contents  were  clearly  not  such  as  Gardiner  would  have 
written  of  his  own  accord,  he  must  have  written  them  like  a  time- 
server,  as  he  was,  because  he  knew  that  they  would  please  Henry. 

But  I  lay  still  more  stress  on  the  two  Commissions  —  that  given 
to  Bonner  in  1539,  and  that  taken  out  by  Cranmer  in  1546.  They 
are  instruments  of  high  dignity  and  importance  —  they  run  in  very 
similar  language ;  and  they  must  be  held  to  express  the  deliberate 
sense  of  those  who  ruled  the  Church  and  State  during  a  period  of 
more  than  seven  years.  Your  Lordship  will,  I  think,  admit  that, 
in  both  Commissions,  the  Bishop  is  empowered  to  ordain,  not  merely 
auctoritate  reyis,  a  phrase  which  might  perhaps  be  so  construed  as  to 
save  the  spiritual  independence  of  the  Episcopate,  but  vice  regis,  a 
phrase  which  seems  to  be  susceptible  of  no  such  construction.  Tlie 
best  comment  on  this  word  vice  will  be  found  in  Cranmer's  Declara- 
tion, contained  in  the  Stillingfleet  MS.  —  "A  Bishop  may  make  a 
Priest  by  the  Scripture  ;  and  so  may  Princes  and  Governors  als^o, 
and  that  by  the  authority  of  God  committed  to  them."  I  really  do 
not  think  that  I  exaggerate  when  I  say  that  in  these  Commissions 
the  King  does  claim  to  be  the  channel  of  Sacramental  Graces. 

Then  as  to  the  claim  of  the  King  to  be  the  expositor  of  doctrine, 
I  cannot  think  that  the  passages  which  your  Lordship  cites  prove 
my  view  to  be  erroneous.  It  appears  from  those  passages  that  the 
King,  before  he  propounded  dogmas  and  commanded  his  people  to 
accept  them  as  orthodox,  consulted  Bishops  and  other  learned  men. 
It  appears  also  that  he  acknowledged  a  certain  spiritual  authority  in 
General  Councils.  But  does  it  follow  hence  that  he  did  not  claim  to 
be  the  Pope  of  England,  the  expositor  of  Catholic  verity  ?  Does 
uot  the  Pope,  before  he  condemns  a  heresy,  consult  theologians  ? 
Were  not  the  books  of  the  Jansenists  and  Quietists  sifted  by  many 
grave  Doctors  before  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  having  weighed  the  re- 
ports and  authorities,  pronounced  his  anathema?  And  do  not  all 
Roman  Catholics  hold  that  General  Councils  congregated  in  Spiniu 
Sanclo  have  a  very  high  and  venerable  authority  1  Nay,  many  Ro- 
man Catholics,  we  know,  have  maintained  that  a  General  Council 


APPENDIX.  475 

might  be  called  without  the  consent,  nay,  in  defiance  of  the  prohibi- 
tion, of  the  Supreme  rontiff.  The  two  Councils  of  Pisa  were  act" 
ually  80  called,  and  one  of  tliem  at  least  has  always  been  held  by  a 
large  party  to  have  been  a  good  and  regular  Council.  The  Anglican 
Church,  in  declaring  that  a  Council  cannot  be  held  in  Siiiritu  Suncto 
without  the  Royal  Consent,  has  really  ascribed  a  higher  spiritual 
power  to  the  King  than  the  most  illustrious  Galilean  Divines  have 
ever  ascribed  to  the  Pope. 

I  have  carefully  considered  what  your  Lordship  has  written  con- 
cerning that  great  change  which,  as  I  hold,  took  place  in  the  senti- 
ments of  our  Ecclesiastical  rulers  during  the  seventeenth  century. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  whole  question  is  decided  by  this  single  tiict, 
that,  till  the  Act  of  Uniformity  was  passed  after  the  Restoration, 
Episcopal  Ordination  was  not  necessary,  either  in  law  or  in  practice, 
to  the  exercise  of  any  priestly  function  in  the  Church  of  England. 
"  The  Act  of  Uniformity,"  says  Clarendon,  "  admitted  no  person  to 
have  any  Cure  of  Souls  or  any  Ecclesiastical  dignity  in  the  Church 
of  England,  but  such  who  had  been  or  should  be  ordained  Priest  or 
Deacon  by  some  Bishop.  This,"  he  goes  on,  "  was  mw.  For  there 
liad  been  many,  and  at  present  there  were  some,  who  possessed  Ben- 
efices with  Cure  of  Souls  and  other  Ecclesiastical  promotions,  who 
had  never  received  orders  but  in  France  or  Holland ;  and  these  men 
must  now  receive  new  Ordination,  which  had  always  been  held  un- 
lawful in  the  Church,  or  by  this  Act  of  Parliament  must  be  deprived 
of  their  livelihood,  which  they  enjoyed  in  the  most  flourishing  and 
peaceable  time  of  the  Church.  And  therefore  it  was  saitl  that  this 
liad  not  been  the  opinion  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  that  it 
would  be  a  great  reproach  on  all  other  Protestant  Churches  who  had 
no  Bishop,  as  if  they  had  no  Ministers,  and  consequently  were  no 
Churches ;  for  that  it  was  well  known  the  Church  of  England  did 
not  allow  reordination,  as  the  ancient  Church  never  admitted  it ;  in- 
asmuch as,  if  any  priest  of  the  Church  of  Rome  renounces  the  Com 
munion  thereof,  his  ordination  is  not  questioned.  And,  therefore, 
the  not  admitting  the  Ministers  of  other  Protestants  to  have  the 
same  privilege  here,  can  proceed  on  no  other  ground  tlian  that  they 
looked  not  upon  them  as  Ministers,  having  no  ordination,  which  is  a 
judgment  the  Church  of  England  liad  not  ever  owned." 

Thus  far  Clarendon.  But  the  Statute-book  contains  evidence  still 
more  decisive.  1  refer  to  the  Act  of  Parliament,  18  Eliz.  c.  12.  "  In 
»rder,"  says  the  Act,  "  that  the  Churches  of  the  Queen's  Majesty 
may  be  supplied  with  Pastors  of  sound  religion,  it  is  enacted  that 
every  person  pretending  to  be  a  Priest  or  iMinistcr  of  Ciod's  Holy 
Word  and  Sacraments,  by  reason  of  any  other  form  of  institution, 
consecration,  or  ordination,  than  the  form  set  forth  by  Parliament," 


476  APPENDIX. 

ehall  be  episcopally  ordained,  if  not  ordained  already  ?  No ;  but 
sliall  subscribe  the  Articles,  or  shall  be  incapable  of  holding  any 
benefice.  And  with  this  law  the  practice  was  in  perfect  harmony. 
Elizabeth  made  Whittingham  Dean  of  Durham.  He  had  been  or- 
dained at  Geneva.  The  Archbishop  of  York  questioned  the  appoint- 
ment. The  case  was  tried,  and  finally  decided  in  Whittingham's 
favour.  Dr.  Delaune,  who  had  been  ordained  at  Leyden  bj'^  the 
Presbytery,  was  presented  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  to  a  living  in  the 
diocese  of  Norwich,  and  was  instituted  by  Bishop  Overall.  In 
Str^'pe's  Life  of  Grindal  is  the  license  which  the  Archbishop  gave  to 
John  Morrison,  who  had  been  ordained  by  the  Presbytery  of  Lothian. 
The  preamble  recites  that  Morrison  had  been  admitted  to  the  Minis- 
try according  to  the  laudable  rite  of  the  Reformed  Church  of  Scot- 
land, and  that  he  was  orthodox  in  the  fiiith.  He  is,  therefore,  em- 
powered by  the  Primate  to  celebrate  divine  offices,  and  to  minister  the 
iSucruments  throughout  the  whole  province  of  Canterbury. 

The  Convocation,  unless  I  greatly  mistake,  ratified  the  judgment 
of  the  Parliament  on  this  subject.  For  surely  the  65th  Canon  of 
1603  must  be  understood  as  a  distinct  recognition  of  Presbyterian 
orders.  That  Canon  directs  all  preachers,  before  their  sermons,  to 
exhort  the  people  to  pray  for  Christ's  Holy  Catholic  Church,  and 
especially  for  the  Churches  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland. 
Now,  in  1603,  Episcopal  Ordination  was  unknown  in  the  Scotch 
Church.  The  only  Bishops  in  Scotland  were  tiiose  Tulchan  bishops 
who  had  never  been  consecrated,  and  who  were  just  such  bishops 
as  his  late  Royal  Highness  the  Bishop  of  Osnaburg.  Here  then  we 
have  a  Presbyterian  Church  mentioned,  between  two  Episcopal 
Churches,  as  being,  not  less  than  those  Episcopal  Churches,  a 
branch  of  Christ's  Holy  Catholic  Church.  Is  it  possible  to  believe 
that  either  the  Upper  or  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation,  M'hen 
this  Canon  was  voted,  held  that  the  Church  of  Scotland  was  not 
within  the  definition  of  a  true  Church  given  in  the  Articles  1 

I  have  trespassed  so  long  on  your  Lordship's  patience  tliat  I  will 
not  venture  to  discuss  the  important  question,  whether  the  framers 
of  our  Articles  and  Homilies  took  the  Calvinistic  or  the  Arminian 
view  of  the  great  problems  of  metaphysical  theology.  In  truth  I 
could  not,  without  writing  a  pamphlet,  give  one  half  of  the  reasons 
which  have  led  me  to  the  conclusion  at  which  I  have  arrived.  I 
will,  however,  just  mention  one  circumstance  which  seems  to  me 
important,  and  which  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  noticed.  The 
Act  of  Toleration  was  specially  intended  for  the  relief  of  the  Cal- 
vinistic Dissenters.  The  relief  given  by  that  Act  was  confined  to 
persons  who  should  subscribe  all  the  Articles  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, with  the  exception  of  the  34th,  the  35th,  the  36th,  and  some 


APPENDIX.  477 

words  of  the  20th  and  27th.  Tlie  Legislature  absolutely  required 
tlie  disciples  of  Owen  and  Bunyan,  the  old  members  of  the  Assem- 
bly of  Divines,  men  who  avowedly  lield  the  doctrines  of  tlie  Confes- 
sion of  Faith,  to  sign  the  Articles  of  the  Church  of  England  on  Free 
Will,  Justification,  Election,  and  Predestination ;  and  these  men 
made  not  the  least  objection.  Now  surely,  if  the  sense  of  the  Arti- 
cles were  plairdy  Arminian,  it  would  have  been  as  absurd  to  offer 
toleration  to  the  Pui-itans  on  condition  of  their  subscribing  the  Arti- 
cles as  it  would  have  been  to  offer  toleration  to  the  Socinians  on 
condition  of  their  subscribing  the  Athanasian  Creed,  or  to  Papists 
on  condition  of  their  taking  the  declaration  against  Transubstantia- 
tion.  The  fact  that  .a  law  intended  for  the  relief  of  sects  notoriously 
Calvinistic  was  framed  in  this  way,  I  consider  as  a  distinct  declara- 
tion of  the  Legislature  that  the  Doctrinal  Articles  may  honestly,  and 
witliout  any  straining,  be  understood  in  a  Calvinistic  sense. 

You  are  probably  aware  that  the  strictly  Calvinistic  Dissenters 
long  continued  to  attach  great  importance  to  the  rule  about  sub- 
scription, and  were  alarmed  and  indignant  when  it  was  relaxed. 
They  actually  petitioned  Parliament  against  any  relaxation  in  1773. 
A  very  remarkable  speech  of  Burke  on  the  subject  will  be  found  in 
his  works.  The  writings  of  William  Huntington,  S.  S.,  who  was 
something  more  than  a  Calvinist,  contain  several  curious  passages 
on  this  subject.  He  evidently  wished  the  subscription  to  be  retained 
for  the  purpose  of  discouraging  Arminianism  among  the  Non-Con- 
formists. 

But  I  must  stop.  I  again  assure  your  Lordship  that  I  will  care- 
fully reconsider  the  opinion  which  I  have  formed  on  tliese  important 
matters,  and  will  weigh  with  attention  the  many  valuable  observa- 
tions contained  in  your  letters. 

I  beg  again  to  repeat  the  expression  of  my  respectful  gratitude  for 
your  great  kindness.  When  your  parliamentary  duties  call  you 
to  London  I  will  do  myself  the  honour  of  repeating  my  thanks  in 
person. 

In  the  mean  time  I  have  the  honour  to  be. 
My  Lord, 
Your  Lordsliip's  most  faithful  servant, 

T.  B.  Macadlay. 

Wliile  the  Bishop  was  not  disposed  to  differ  with  Mr.  Macaulay 
in  his  view  of  the  character  of  Cranmer,  he  regretted  that  the  his- 
torian had  not  given  the  Archbishop  credit  for  his  noble  opposition 
to  the  Act  of  the  Six  Articles,  in  spite  of  the  demand  of  Henry 
Vni.  that  he  should  support  the  measure,  or  at  least  remain  neu- 
tral. Cranmer  attended  every  discussion  of  the  Bill,  and  opposed 
.t  vehemently  at  every  stage. 


478  APPENDIX. 

The  changes  made  by  Mr.  Macaulay  in  the  text  of  the  pagos  to 
which  particular  reference  is  made  in  tlie  correspondence  were  as  fol- 
lows : 

p.  56,  supra,  11.  29,  31,  —  where  the  word  "  courtier  "  occurs  it  has 
been  substituted  for  "  statesman  "  in  deference  to  the  Bishop's  sug- 
gestion that  Cranmer  was  entirely  free  from  statecraft,  and  probably 
owed  much  of  his  influence  over  Henry  to  his  entire  abstinence  from 
all  dealing  with  matters  of  state. 

p.  60,  1.  22.  The  original  statement  was  qualified  by  the  insertion 
of  the  words  "  at  one  time." 

p.  60, 1.  33.  In  his  early  editions  Mr.  Macaulay  stated  that  Henry 
proclaimed  it  in  his  power  to  "  confer  the  episcopal  character  and  to 
take  it  away."  This  the  Bishop  emphatically  denied  —  admitting 
that  every  Sovereign  may  deprive  any  Bishop  of  the  right  to  "  enact 
the  Episcopal  character  within  his  or  its  domains."  Mr.  Macaulay 
substituted  for  "  the  episcopal  character  "  the  words  "  episcopal  au- 
thority." 

p.  61, 1.  2,  —  "  as  his  deputies  "  were  inserted  after  "  functions,"  — 
and  "  royal "  erased  before  the  word  "  pleasure." 

p.  61, 11. 15, 16.  This  sentence  originally  read,  —  "  These  opinions 
Cranmer  followed  out  to  their  legitimate  consequences." 

p.  61,  1.  23,  originally,  —  "  to  ordain  and  to  perform  other  spiritual 
functions." 

p.  61, 1.  27,  —  "  some  theologians,"  —  originally  "  the  theologians." 

pp.  83,  84.  The  sentence  beginning  "  An  instrument  is  still  ex- 
tant"—  and  the  sentence  following  —  were  inserted  iu  the  text  sub- 
sequently to  the  controversy  with  the  Bishop. 

Mr.  Macaulay's  opinions  on  the  subjects  of  this  controversy  had 
been  long  formed,  and  were  consistentlj'  maintained.  See  his  reviews 
of  Hallaui's  Constitutional  History,  and  of  Mackintosh's  History  of 
the  Revolution  in  England,  in  1688.] 

On  this  subject  Bishop  Cooper's  language  is  reraarka- 
Church  with-  bly  clear  and  strong.  He  maintains,  in  his  Answer  to  Mar- 
out  a  Bishop.  ti,j  Marprelate,  printed  in  1589,  that  no  form  of  church 
government  is  divinely  ordained  ;  that  Protestant  com- 
munities, in  establishing  different  forms,  have  only  made  a  legitimate 
use  of  their  Christian  liberty ;  and  that  episcopacy  is  peculiarly 
suited  to  England,  because  the  English  constitution  is  monarchical. 
"  All  those  churches,"  says  the  Bishop,  "  in  which  the  Gospell,  in 
these  dales,  after  great  darknesse,  was  first  renewed,  and  the  learned 
men  whom  God  sent  to  instruct  them,  I  doubt  not  but  have  been 
directed  by  the  Spirite  of  God  to  retaine  this  liberty,  that,  in  e.xtertal 
government  and  other  outward  orders,  they  might  choose  such  as 
they  thought  in  wisedome  and  godlinesse  to  be  most  convenient  for 


APPENDIX.  479 

Ihe  state  of  their  countrey  and  disposition  of  their  people.  Why 
then  should  this  liberty  that  otiier  countreys  have  used  under  anie 
colour  be  wrested  from  us  ?  I  think  it  therefore  great  presumption 
and  boldnesse  that  some  of  our  nation,  and  those,  wiiatever  they  may 
think  of  themselves,  not  of  the  greatest  wisdome  and  skill,  sliould 
take  upon  them  to  controlle  the  whole  realme,  and  to  binde  both 
prince  and  people  in  respect  of  conscience  to  alter  the  present  state, 
and  tie  themselves  to  a  certain  plattbrme  devised  by  some  of  our 
neighbours,  which,  in  the  judgement  of  many  wise  and  godly  per- 
sons, is  most  unfit  for  the  state  of  a  Kingdonie." 

Joseph  Hall,  then  Dean  of  Worcester,  and  afterwards    gyng^  ^f 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  wa«  one  of  the  commissioners.    In    Dort.   v.  84, 
his  life  of  himself,   he   says  :    "  My    unworthincss   was    °°  ^' 
named  for  one  of  the  assistants  of  that  honourable,  grave,  and  rev 
ererid  meeting."     To  high  churchmen  this  humility  will  seem  not 
a  little  out  of  place. 

[In  his  third  letter  to  Mr.  Macaulay,  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  con- 
demns as  a  "disgraceful  fact"  the  sending  by  James  I.  of  Bishop 
Carleton,  and  Dean  (afterwards  Bishop)  Hall  to  the  Synod  of  Dort. 
He  doubts  if  this  was  done  by  the  King  as  the  head  of  the  Church, 
but  contends  that  if  it  were  so  the  Church  is  no  more  responsible  for 
any  irregular  or  schismatical  act  of  this  its  head,  than  the  state  is  for 
any  unauthorized  usurpation  of  j)ower,  any  violation  of  the  tempo- 
ral rights  of  the  people,  which  any  of  the  Henrys,  or  Jameses,  or 
Charleses  thought  fit  to  perpetrate.  "  I  need  not  tell  you,"  he  adds, 
"  that  the  Synod  of  Dort  had  much  more  of  a  jmlitical  tlian  of  an 
ecclesiastical  character.  It  was  holdcn  for  the  purpose  of  sustaining 
the  influence  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  the  patron  of  the  Calvinists, 
against  Barnvdt  and  his  party,  the  friends  and  supporters  of  the  Ar- 
nunians."  The  Bisliop  does  not  believe  that  the  "  Doctors  at  Dort  " 
were  very  man}'  of  them  "  wilhoul  Episcopal  ordination,"  —  but  this, 
lie  admits,  makes  very  little  difference;  —  "the  Synod  was  one 
which  the  Church  of  England  could  not  recognize;  nor  did  it  — 
M-hatever  was  done  by  the  Sovereign.  Bishop  Carleton  stood  up  for 
Episcopacy  at  the  Synod  ;  and  Ilali's  greatest  work  is  "  Episcopacy 
by  Divine  Right  Asserted,"  written,  many  years  afterwards,  under 
the  eye  oi  Laud.  How  such  men,  notwithstanding  the  Calvinism  of 
one,  and  the  semi-Calvinism  of  the  other,  could  have  gone  to  such  a 
Synod,  I  do  not  undertake  to  explain."] 

It  was  by  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  passed  after  the  Res-    ^^.j  ^^  p^.. 
toration,  that  persons  not  episcopally  ordained  were,  for    formity.    P. 
the  first  time,  made  incapaiile  of  holding  benefices.    No    *''*'  ""'^'" 
man  was  more  zealous  for  this  law  than  Clarendon.     Yet  he  8.iys  : 
"  This  was  new  :  for  there  had  been  many,  and  at  present  there  were 


480  APPENDIX. 

some,  wlio  possessed  benefices  with  cure  of  souls  and  other  ecclesias- 
tical protnotions,  who  had  never  received  orders  but  in  France  or 
Holland;  and  these  men  must  now  receive  new  ordination,  which 
had  been  always  held  unlawful  in  the  Church,  or  by  this  act  of  par- 
liament must  be  deprived  of  their  livelihood  which  they  enjoyed  in 
the  most  flourishing  and  peaceable  time  of  the  Church." 

[This  note  was  first  inserted  subsequently  to  the  correspondence 
with  the  Bishop  of  Exeter.  The  passage  from  Clarendon  is  also 
cited  with  additions  in  one  of  Mr.  Macaulay's  letters  to  the  Bishop, 
and  the  Bishop  complains  that  though  Mr.  Macaulay  was  incapable 
of  intentionally  making  an  illusory  citation,  yet  the  unintended  effect 
of  the  citation  in  his  letter  was  illusory.  The  Bishop  in  the  notes  to 
the  published  correspondence  prints  the  passage  in  connection  both 
with  what  precedes  and  with  what  follows  —  which  does  not  seem 
to  affect  the  statement  in  illustration  of  which  it  is  cited.] 

^  I  am  happy  to  say  that  since  this  passage  was  written 

Oude.  P.  225,  the  territories  both  of  the  Rajah  of  Nagpore  and  of  the 
note  to  1.31.  j^^^  ^^  0\ide  have  been  added  to  the  British  domm- 
ions.     (1857.) 

[In  1817  the  Rajah  of  Nagpore,  sometimes  called  of  Berar,  took  up 
arms  against  the  British,  and  was  deposed.  When  his  son  came  of 
age  in  1826,  the  country  was  restored  to  him  ;  and  on  his  dying 
without  heirs  in  December,  1853,  this  province  of  4,650,000  inhab- 
itants was  added  to  the  possessions  of  the  East  India  Company. 
Oude  was  "  annexed  "  by  a  proclamation  issued  by  the  governor- 
general  in  1856,  deposing  the  King,  but  allowing  him  a  liberal  pen- 
sion and  permission  to  retain  his  titles.  In  the  year  when  the  au- 
thor's note  was  written,  the  province  was  in  a  state  of  insurrec- 
tion, and  was  only  subdued  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1859, 
when  all  its  forts  were  destroyed,  and  the  whole  population  was  dis- 
armed.] 

Population.  [The  population  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  1871  was 
P.  310,  note.  thir1r)'-one  million,  eight  hundred  and  fifty-seven  thou- 
sand, three  hundred  and  thirty-eight,  thus  distributed  :  — 

England  and  Wales 22,712,266 

Scotland 3,360,018 

Ireland 5,411,416 

Islands 144,638 

Army.  Navy,  and  Merchant  Seamen  abroad       .         229,000 

Total  United  Kingdom 31,857,338 

The  Census  of  1871  shows  an  increase  during  the  decade  of  2,646,- 
042  persons,  and  519,612  inhabited  houses  in  England  and  Wales ;  in 
Scotland,  an  increase  of  297,724  persons,  and  18,965  inhabited  houses; 


I 


APPENDIX.  481 

in  the  Channel  Islands  and  Man,  an  increase  of  1,191  persons,  and 
944  inhabited  houses;  but  in  Ireland  a  decrease  of  387,551  persons 
(or  56,806  families)  and  33,927  houses ;  or  a  total  increase  in  Great 
Britain  of  2,285,694  persons,  and  506,620  inhabited  houses.  The 
population  in  urban  districts  in  England  and  Wales,  has  grown  more 
than  twice  as  fast  as  that  of  the  rural  districts  (1.73  per  cent,  against 
0.71 ),  and  very  nearly  the  same  per  centage  prevails  in  Scotland. 

Ireland  reached  its  highest  point  in  1845,  when  its  entire  popula- 
tion was  estimated  at  8,295,061.  The  failure  of  the  potato  crop  for 
two  successive  years  produced  famine  and  disease,  <and  the  population 
rapidly  diminished  under  their  influence,  and  the  new  impulse  given 
to  emigration.  Since  1845,  the  decrease  of  the  Irish  population  has 
been  2,892,302,  or  nearly  35  per  cent. 

The  estimated  population  of  the  several  divisions  of  the  United 
Kingdom  in  the  middle  of  1874,  was  as  follows  :  England  and  Wales, 
23,648,609;  Scotland,  3,462,916  ;  Ireland,  5,300,485.  Total,  32,41 2,- 
010.] 

[The  Public  Revenue  of  the  United  Kingdom  for  the    jievenuein 
year  ending  31st  of  March,  1874,  was  as  follows:  Cus-    1873-4.    P 
toms,  .£20,616,063;  Exci.se,  Stamps,  Taxes  and  Licome    ^l^' 'i°'^- 
Tax,    £47,342,825;   Post    OtKce,    £7,296,354;    Telegraph    Service, 
£1,216,195;    Crown  Lands,  £487,695;   Miscellaneous,    £3,948,706; 
making  a  total  of  £80,907,838.     Practically,  excluding  such  amounts 
as  advances  and  repayments  for  local  works,  the  actual  revenue  for 
the  year  was  from  all  sources,  £77,335,657.     The  total  ordinary  ex- 
penditure was  .£76,466,510;  the  expense  of  fortification,  £500,000; 
and  the  surplus  of  income  over  total  expenditure,  £369,147.     Among 
the  expenditures  was  an  item  of  £3,196,875  for  the  Alabama  Claims. 
The  interest  of  the  Public  Debt  and  management  was  .£21,986,102. 

Tiie  Excise,  which  produced  net  .£585,000  in  the  hist  year  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  II.,  produced  £27,115,970  in  1873-4.  The  net  pro- 
ce(Hls  of  the  Customs,  in  the  former  year,  £530,000,  were  in  the  latter 
year  £20,323,325.] 

In  1854  the  quantity  of  coal  brought  into  London  c^ni.  P. 349 
amounted  to  4,378,000  tons.  (1857.)  [In  the  time  of  note. 
Charles  11.,  one  half  the  produce  of  the  English  coal  pits  wa.s  con- 
sumed in  London  ;  in  1848,  about  one  tenth,  and  in  1872,  less  than 
one  twentieth.  The  produce  mcainvhilc  had  increased  from  700,000 
tons  to  120,000,000  tons.  In  the  quarter  of  a  century  that  has  elajiscd 
since  the  text  was  written  the  annual  produce  has  been  quadrupled. 
The  amount  exported  annually  is  about  13,000,000  tons.] 

VOL.   I.  31 


482  APPENDIX. 

The  Clergy  ^"  the  eighteenth  century  tlie  great  increase  in    tlie 

plebeian.         vahic    of  benefices   produced  a  change.     The  younger 
'  sons   of  tlie   nobility  were  allured  back  to  the  clerical 

profession.  Warburton  in  a  letter  to  Hurd,  dated  the  5th  of  July, 
1752,  mentions  this  change,  which  was  then  recent.  "  Our  grandees 
have  at  last  found  their  way  back  into  the  Church.  I  only  wonder 
they  have  been  so  long  about  it.  But  be  assured  that  nothing  but  a 
new  religious  revolution,  to  sweep  away  tlie  fragments  that  Henry 
the  Eighth  left  after  banqueting  his  courtiers,  will  drive  them  out 
again." 

Social  posi-  I  may  add  that  Swift,  in  his  "  Essay  on  the  Fates  of 

rymen'  ^p"^  Clergymen,"  has  elaborately  traced  the  career  of  two 
362,  notes.  divines,  Eugenius  and  Corusodes,  tlie  man  of  parts  and 
the  dunce.  Differing  in  every  thing  else,  they  both  marry  low 
women.  Eugenius  has  to  take  up  with  a  farmer's  widow,  and  Coru- 
sodes with  a  cast-off  mistress. 

Even  in  "  Tom  Jones,"  published  two  generations  later,  Mrs.  Sea- 
grim,  the  wife  of  a  game-keeper,  and  Mrs.  Honour,  a  waiting  woman, 
boast  of  their  descent  from  clergymen.  "  It  is  to  be  hoped,"  snya 
Fielding,  "  such  instances  will  in  future  ages,  when  some  provision 
is  made  for  the  families  of  the  inferior  clergy,  appear  stranger  than 
they  can  be  thought  at  present." 

[The  quotation  of  Swift's  advice  as  .an  historical  authority  is  of 
itself  droll  enough ;  but  why  does  Mr.  Macanlay  conceal  that  the 
same  authority  tells  us  that  as  the  Clidplain  was  to  be  rewarded  with 
the  Abigail,  the  gentleman's  Valet  was  to  have  a  Commission  in  tlie 
army,  and  the  Footman  was  to  marry  my  Lord's  Widoto?  Would  Mr. 
Macanlay  quote  these  exaggerated  pleasantries  as  a  proof  of  the  gen- 
eral degradation  of  the  Army  or  the  Peerage  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II.  or  even  of  George  II.  ?  Why,  then,  of  the  Clergy  ?  We  con- 
fess our  only  wonder  is,  that  when  he  was  ransacking  his  "  lighter 
literature,"  from  Elizabeth  to  the  Georges,  —  nay,  that  even  in  graver 
literature,  —  he  was  not  able  to  produce  an  hundred  exceptional  cases, 
which,  paraded  after  his  usual  fashion  as  specimens  of  general  man- 
ner, might  have  given  some  color  to  his  imputations.  But  the  truth 
is,  the  whole  amount  of  testimony,  light  as  well  as  grave,  was  the 
other  way  ;  and  the  amiable  and  respectable  picture  which  Addison 
(though  not  unwilling  to  banter  him  a  little)  draws  of  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley's  chaplain,  must  be  in  the  memory  of  most  readers  as  a 
contradiction  of  Mr.  Macaulay's  sweeping  imputations.— J.  W. 
Ckokek.     Quarterly  Review  84,  p.  594.] 


APPENDIX.  483 

In  1851  Leeds  had  172,000  inhabitants.  (1857.)  [Leeds   Leeds.   P. 
in  1871  had  259,212  inhabitants.     Its  woollen  manufac-    375. 
tures  now  surpass  those  of  all  other  cities  in  England.     More  leather 
is  tanned  here  than  any  where  else  in  the  British  Empire.     It  is  an 
important  railroad  centre,  and  in  the  environs  are  more  than  a  hun- 
dred collieries.] 

In  1851  the  population  of  Sheffield  had  increased  to    Sheffield.  P. 
135,000  inhabitants.     (1857.)     [Sheffield  in  1871  had  in-    376. 
creased  to  239,947  inhabitants,  having  doubled  in  population  since 
the  text  was  written.] 

In  1851  the  population  of  Birmingham  had  increased  Birmingham 
to  232,000.     (1857.)     [Birmingham  in   1871    numbered   P- 377. 
343,696  inhabitants.] 

In  1851  Liverpool  contained  375,000  inhabitants.  Liverpool. 
(1857.)  [The  figures  of  the  text,  though  written  but  a  P-378. 
quarter  of  a  century  since,  convey  a  very  inadequate  idea  of  the 
Liverpool  of  to-day.  The  population  now  exceeds  half  a  million. 
The  registered  shipping,  then  between  four  and  five  hundred  thou- 
sand tons,  on  the  first  of  January,  1874,  comprised  1,866  sailing  ves- 
sels, of  990,867  tons  ;  and  563  steamers,  of  412,464  tons.  Nearly  one 
half  of  all  the  exports  from  Great  Britain  pass  through  this  port.  It 
is  the  greatest  cotton  market,  and  its  Australia  trade  is  rapidly  mak- 
ing it  the  greatest  wool  market,  in  the  world.  It  is  a  leading  grain 
market.  It  rivals  London  in  the  Eastern  trade.  The  extraordinary 
growth  of  Liverpool  is  largely  due  to  its  trade  with  the  United 
States.] 

In  1851  the  population  of  London  exceeded  2,300,000.  London.  P. 
(1857.)  [In  1871  the  population  of  London  was  3,266,989.  383. 
The  population  in  the  middle  of  1874,  was  estimated  by  the  registrar 
at  3,400,000.  The  metropolitan  police  district,  and  the  city  police 
district  embrace  a  population  of  3,883,092  ;  without  including  the 
transient  residents  who  are  always  very  numerous.  The  limits  of 
the  districts  embrace  687  square  miles.] 

In  1854  the  tonnage  of  the  steamers  of  the  port  of  Ste.am  Ton- 
London  amounted  to  138,000  tons,  without  reckoning  j^^?  P.  383' 
vessels  of  1<!SS  than  fifty  tons.     (1857.)  note. 

[The  registered  merchant  shipping  of  the  port  of  London  amounted 
January  1,  1874,  to  846  steamers,  of  447,839  tons;  and  1,993  sailing 
vessels,  of  694,218  tons.  The  duty  collected  there  is  between  ten 
and  twelve  million  pounds.] 


484 


APPENDIX. 


Present  [At  the  close  of  1862  the  total  number  of  sailing  ves- 

Great'iJri°-  ^^'^  registered  in  the  various  ports  of  P>nglancl  and 
Jiin.  P.  383,  Wales,  Scotland,  Ireland,  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  the  Chan- 
nel Islands,  was  26,212 ;  their  total  amount  of  tonnage 
4,196,509.  Total  of  steam-vessels,  2,228;  total  of  tiieir  tonnage, 
587,891.  For  1863  there  was  an  increase  of  127  sailing  vessels,  and 
3^4,708  tons,  over  the  preceding  year ;  and  of  one  steam-vessel,  but 
of  58,96.5  steam  tonnage.  The  whole  number  of  sailing  and  steam 
vessels  that  entered  the  ports  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  1872,  foreign 
and  colonial,  was  64,728  ;  with  an  aggregate  tonnage  of  21,015,415 
tons.  There  were  cleared  during  the  same  period  64,883  vessels,  of 
21,485,610  tons. 

In  1873  the  tonnage  of  British  and  Foreign  vessels  (sailing  and 
steam)  entered  with  cargoes  and  in  ballast  at  ports  in  the  United  King- 
dom, from  foreign  countries  and  British  possessions,  was  18,795,657 
tons  ;  cleared  to  the  same,  19,139,365  tons.] 

Post-Office.  I  have  left  the  text  as  it  stood  in  1848.     In  the  year 

P.  425,  note.  1856  the  gross  receipt  of  the  Post  Office  was  more  than 
^2,800,000  ;  and  the  net  receipt  was  about  £1,200,000.  The  number 
of  letters  conveyed  by  post  was  478,000,000.     (1857.) 

[As  nearly  as  it  can  be  ascertained,  the  number  of  letters  which 
passed  through  the  post  in  the  United  Kingdom  in  1873  was  about 
907  millions;  the  number  of  post  cards  about  72  millions;  of  book 
packets,  109  millions;  and  of  newspapers,  125  millions;  making  a 
total  of  1,233  millions  of  articles  posted.  In  th«  last  year  of  high- 
priced  postage,  1839,  three  letters  were  put  into  the  post  by  every  in- 
habitant of  the  United  Kingdom ;  each  person  on  an  average  now 
posts  twenty-nine  letters. 

The  gross  revenue  of  the  Post  Office  for  1873  was  £5,348,000 ;  and 
the  expenditure,  £3,793,000. 

The  force  of  the  Post  Office  is  about  42,000  persons,  comprising 
12,500  postmasters,  9,000  clerks,  and  upwards  of  20,000  sorters,  car- 
riers, and  messengers.  Out  of  this  number  nearly  9,500  belong  to  the 
London  district,  and  of  these  5,000  are  attached  to  the  chief  office  in 
St.  Martin's-Le-Grand. 

The  entire  telegraphic  system  is  now  in  the  hands  of  the  Postal 
authorities,  the  government  having  bought  up  all  the  lines.  It  has 
now  about  5,000  offices,  and  in  1873  sent  upwards  of  17,000,000  mes- 
sages, exclusive  of  those  for  the  newspapers,  which  amounted  to 
38,000,000  words  sent  for  transmission.  The  transfer  of  the  telegraph 
service  to  the  government  is  said  to  have  resulted  in  affording  a  pnjfit 
on  each  year's  transactions  amounting  in  1873-4  to  £1,057,824.  Each 
week's  returns  show  a  rapid  increase  in  the  number  of  telegrams  sent, 
both  for  commercial  and  social  purposes.] 


m)z  mot^^  of  Jlortx  i^acaula^ 


HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND. 
VOL.  n. 


i 


HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

The  death  of  Kino;  Charles  the  Second  took  the 
nation  by  surprise.  His  frame  was  naturally  ^^^^^^  ^j. 
strong,  and  did  not  appear  to  have  suffered  chariesn. 
from  excess.  He  had  always  been  mindful  of  his 
health  even  in  his  pleasures ;  and  his  habits  were  such 
as  promise  a  long  life  and  a  robust  old  age.  Indolent 
as  he  was  on  all  occasions  which  required  tension  of 
the  mind,  he  was  active  and  persevering  in  bodily 
exei'cise.  He  had,  when  young,  been  renowned  as  a 
tennis  player,^  and  was,  even  in  the  decline  of  life,  an 
indefatigable  walker.  His  ordinary  ])ace  was  such  that 
those  who  were  admitted  to  the  honour  of  his  society 
found  it  difficult  to  keep  up  with  him.  He  rose  early, 
and  generally  passed  three  or  four  hours  a  day  in  the 
open  air.  He  might  be  seen,  before  the  dew  was  off 
the  grass  in  St.  James's  Park,  striding  among  the 
trees,  playing  with  his  spaniels,  and  flinging  corn  to 
his  ducks;  and  these  exhibitions  endeared  lim  to  the 
common  people,  who  always  love  to  see  the  great  un 
bend.2 

1  Pepys's  Diary,  Dec.  28.  1663,  Sept.  2.  1667. 

2  Runiet,  i.  606.;  Spectator,  No.  462.;  Lords'  Journals,  Oct.  28.  1678; 
Gibber's  Apology. 


10  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  IV. 

At  length,  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1G84,  he 
was  prevented,  by  a  slight  attack  of  what  was  supposed 
to  be  gout,  from  rambling  as  usual.  He  now  spent  his 
mornings  in  his  laboratory,  where  he  amused  himself 
with  experiments  on  the  properties  of  mercury.  His 
temper  seemed  to  have  suflered  from  confinement. 
He  had  no  apparent  cause  for  disquiet.  His  kingdom 
was  tranquil :  he  was  not  in  pressing  want  of  money  : 
his  power  Avas  greater  than  it  had  ever  been  :  the 
party  which  had  long  thwarted  him  had  been  beaten 
down  ;  but  the  cheerfulness  which  had  supported  him 
against  adverse  fortune  had  vanished  in  this  season  of 
prosperity.  A  trifle  now  sufficed  to  depress  those 
elastic  spirits  which  had  boime  up  against  defeat, 
exile,  and  penury.  His  ii'ritation  frequently  showed 
itself  by  looks  and  words  such  as  could  hardly  have 
been  expected  from  a  man  so  eminently  distinguished 
by  good  humour  and  good  breeding.  It  was  not  sup- 
posed however  that  his  constitution  was  seriously 
impaired.^ 

His  palace  had  seldom  presented  a  gayer  or  a  more 
scandalous  appearance  than  on  the  evening  of  Simday 
the  first  of  February  IGSS.'"^  Some  grave  persons  who 
had  gone  thither,  after  the  fashion  of  that  age,  to  pay 
their  duty  to  their  sovereign,  and  who  had  expected 
that,  on  such  a  day,  his  court  would  wear  a  decent 
aspect,  were  struck  witli  astonishment  and  horror. 
The  great  gallery  of  Whitehall,  an  admirable  relic  of 
the  mao;nificence  of  the  Tudors,  was  crowded  Avith 
revellers  and  gamblers.     The  King  sate  there  cliatting 

1  Burnet,  i.  605,600.;  Wehvood,  138.;  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  251. 

2  I  maj-  take  this  opportunity  of  mentioning  that  whenever  I  give 
inly  one  date,  I  follow  the  old  style,  which  was,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  style  of  England;  but  I  reckon  the  year  from  the  firsi  of 
January. 


1685.]  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  11 

and  toying  with  three  women,  whose  charms  A^-^ere  the 
boast,  and  whose  vices  were  the  disgrace,  of  three 
nations.  Barbara  Pahner,  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  Avas 
there,  no  longer  young,  but  still  retaining  some  traces 
of  that  superb  and  voluptuous  loveliness  which  twenty 
years  before  OA^ercame  the  hearts  of  all  men.  There 
too  M-^as  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  whose  soft  and 
infantine  features  were  lighted  up  with  the  vivacity  of 
France.  Hortensia  Mancini,  Duchess  of  Mazarin, 
and  niece  of  the  great  Cardinal,  completed  the  group. 
She  had  been  early  removed  from  her  native  Italy  to 
the  court  where  her  uncle  was  supreme.  His  power 
and  her  own  attractions  had  drawn  a  crowd  of  illus- 
trious suitors  round  her.  Charles  himself,  during  his 
exile,  had  sought  her  hand  in  vain.  No  ojift  of  nature 
or  of  fortune  seemed  to  be  Avantino;  to  her.  Her  face 
Avas  beautiful  AA'ith  the  nch  beauty  of  the  South,  her 
understanding  quick,  her  manners  graceful,  her  rank 
exalted,  her  possessions  immense  ;  but  her  ungovern- 
able passions  had  turned  all  these  blessings  into  curses. 
She  had  found  the  misery  of  an  ill  assorted  marriage 
intolerable,  had  fled  from  her  husband,  had  abandoned 
her  A'ast  wealth,  and,  after  having  astonished  Rome 
and  Piedmont  by  her  adA-entures,  had  fixed  her  abode 
in  England.  Her  house  was  the  favourite  resort  of 
men  of  wit  and  pleasure,  avIio,  for  the  sake  of  her 
smiles  and  her  table,  endured  her  frequent  fits  of 
insolence  and  ill  humour.  Rochester  and  Godolphin 
sometimes  forgot  the  cares  of  state  in  her  company. 
Baiillon  and  Saint  Evremond  found  in  her  draAving 
room  cons()lati(m  for  their  long  banishment  from  Paris. 
The  learning  of  Vossius,  the  Avit  of  Waller,  Avere 
daily  employed  to  flatter  and  amuse  her.  But  her 
liseased  mind  required  stronger  stimulants,  and  sought 


12  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

them  in  gallantry,  in  basset,  and  in  usquebaugh.^ 
While  Charles  flirted  with  his  three  sultanas,  Hor- 
tensia's  French  page,  a  handsome  boy,  whose  vocal 
performances  were  the  delight  of  Whitehall,  and  were 
rewarded  by  numerous  presents  of  rich  clothes,  ponies, 
and  guineas,  warbled  some  amorous  verses.^  A  party 
of  twenty  courtiers  was  seated  at  cards  round  a  large 
table  on  which  gold  was  heaped  in  mountains.^  Even 
then  the  King  had  complained  that  he  did  not  feel 
quite  well.  He  had  no  appetite  for  his  supper:  his 
rest  that  night  was  broken ;  but  on  the  following 
morning  he  rose,  as  usual,  early. 

To  that  morning  the  contending  factions  in  his 
council  had,  during  some  days,  looked  forward  with 
anxiety.  The  struggle  between  Halifax  and  Roches- 
ter seemed  to  be  approaching  a  decisive  crisis.  Hali- 
fax, not  content  with  having  already  driven  his  rival 
from  the  Board  of  Treasury,  had  undertaken  to  prove 
him  guilty  of  such  dishonesty  or  neglect  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  finances  as  ought  to  be  punished  by  dismis- 
sion from  the  public  service.  It  was  even  whispered 
that  the  Lord  President  would  probably  be  sent  to  the 
Tower.  The  King  had  pi-omised  to  inquire  into  the 
matter.  The  second  of  February  had  been  fixed  for 
the  investigation ;  and  several  officers  of  the  revenue 
had  been  ordered  to  attend  with  their  books  on  that 
day.*     But  a  great  turn  of  fortune  was  at  hand. 

Scarcely  had  Charles  risen  from  his  bed  when  his 

1  Saint  Evremond,  passim.    St.  R^al,  M^moires  de  la  Duchesse  de  Maza* 
rin;  Rochester's  Farewell;  Evelyn's  Diary,  Sept.  6.  1676,  June  11.  1699. 

2  Evelyn's  Diary,  Jan.  28.  1681 ;  Saint  E\Temond's  Letter  to  Ddry. 

3  Evelyn's  Diary,  Feb.  4.  168i. 

4  Roger  North's  Life  of  Sir  Dudley  North,  170. ;  The  True  Patriot  vin- 
dicated,  or  a  Justification   of  his  Excellency  the   E of  R ; 

Burnet,  i.  605.  The  Treasury  Books  prove  that  Burnet  had  good  intelli- 
gence. 


1685.]  CHAELES   THE   SECOND.  13 

attendants  perceived  that  his  utterance  was  indistinct, 
and  that  his  thouohts  seemed  to  be  wanderino-.  Sev- 
eral  men  of  rank  had,  as  usual,  assembled  to  see  their 
sovereign  shaved  and  dressed.  He  made  an  effort  to 
converse  vkdth  them  in  his  usual  gay  style  ;  but  his 
ghastly  look  surprised  and  alarmed  them.  Soon  his 
face  grew  black ;  his  eyes  turned  in  his  head ;  he 
uttered  a  cry,  staggered,  and  fell  into  the  arms  of 
one  of  his  lords.  A  physician  who  had  charge  of  the 
royal  retorts  and  crucibles  happened  to  be  present. 
He  had  no  lancet ;  but  he  opened  a  vein  with  a  pen- 
knife. The  blood  flowed  freely  ;  but  the  King  was 
still  insensible. 

He  was  laid  on  his  bed,  where,  during  a  short  time, 
the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth  hung  over  him  with  the 
familiarity  of  a  wife.  But  the  alarm  had  been  given. 
The  Queen  and  the  Duchess  of  York  were  hastening 
to  the  room.  The  favourite  concubine  was  forced  to 
retire  to  her  own  apartments.  Those  apartments  had 
been  thrice  pulled  down  and  thrice  rebuilt  by  her 
lover  to  gratify  her  caprice.  The  very  furniture  of 
the  chimney  was  massy  silver.  Several  fine  paintings, 
which  properly  belonged  to  the  Queen,  had  been 
transferred  to  the  dwelling  of  the  mistress.  The  side- 
boards were  piled  with  richly  wrought  plate.  In  the 
niches  stood  cabinets,  the  masterpieces  of  Japanese 
art.  On  the  hangings,  fresh  from  the  looms  of  Paris, 
were  depicted,  in  tints  which  no  English  tapestry 
could  rival,  birds  of  gorgeous  plumage,  landscapes, 
hunting  matches,  the  lordly  terrace  of  Saint  Gcr- 
mains,  the  statues  and  fountains  of  Versailles.^  In 
the  midst  of  this  splendour,  purchased  by  guilt  and 
ahame,   the    unha])py  woman    gave   herself  up   to  an 

>  Evelyn's  Diary,  Jan.  24.  168^,  Oct.  4.  1083. 


14    '  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  FV. 

agony  of  grief,  which,  to  do  her  justice,  was  not  wholly 
selfish. 

And  now  the  gates  of  Whitehall,  which  ordinarily 
stood  open  to  all  comers,  were  closed.  But  persons 
whose  faces  were  known  were  still  permitted  to  enter. 
The  antechamhers  and  galleries  were  soon  filkd  to 
overflowing ;  and  even  the  sick  room  was  crowded 
with  peers,  privy  councillors,  and  foreign  ministers. 
All  the  medical  men  of  note  in  London  were  sum- 
moned. So  high  did  political  animosities  run  that 
the  presence  of  some  Whig  physicians  was  regarded  as 
an  extraordinary  circumstance.^  One  Roman  Catholic 
whose  skill  was  then  widely  renowned,  Doctor  Thomas 
Short,  was  in  attendance.  Several  of  the  prescriptions 
have  been  preserved.  One  of  them  is  signed  by  four- 
teen Doctors.  The  patient  was  bled  largely.  Hot 
iron  was  applied  to  his  head.  A  loathsome  volatile 
salt,  extracted  from  human  skulls,  was  forced  into  his 
mouth.  He  recovered  his  senses  ;  but  he  was  evi- 
dently in  a  situation  of  extreme  danger. 

The  Queen  was  for  a  time  assiduous  in  her  attend- 
ance. The  Duke  of  York  scarcely  left  his  brother's 
bedside.  The  Primate  and  four  other  Bishops  were 
then  in  London.  They  remained  at  Whitehall  all  day, 
and  took  it  by  tui'ns  to  sit  up  at  night  in  the  King's 
room.  The  news  of  his  illness  filled  the  capital  with 
sorrow  and  dismay.  For  his  easy  temper  and  aifable 
manners  had  won  the  affection  of  a  large  part  of  the 
nation  ;  and  those  who  most  disliked  him  preferred  his 
unprincipled  levity  to  the  stern  and  earnest  bigotry  of 
his  brother. 

On  the  morning  of  Thursday  the  fifth  of  February, 
the  London  Gazette  announced  that  His  Majesty  was 
1  Dugdale's  Correspondence. 


II 


1685.]  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  15 

going  on  well,  and  was  thought  by  the  physicians  to 
be  out  of  danger.  The  bells  of  all  the  churches  ranij; 
merrily ;  and  preparations  for  bonfires  were  made  in 
the  streets.  But  in  the  evening  it  was  known  that  a 
relapse  had  taken  place,  and  that  the  medical  attend- 
ants had  given  up  all  hope.  The  public  mind  was 
greatly  disturbed  ;  but  there  was  no  disposition  to  tu- 
mult. -The  Duke  of  York,  who  had  already  taken  on 
himself  to  give  orders,  ascertained  that  the  City  was 
perfectly  quiet,  and  that  he  might  without  difficulty  be 
proclaimed  as  soon  as  his  brother  should  expire. 

The  King  was  in  great  pain,  and  complained  that  he 
felt  as  if  a  fire  was  burning  within  him.  Yet  he  bore 
up  against  his  sufferings  with  a  fortitude  which  did  not 
seem  to  belono:  to  his  soft  and  luxurious  nature.  The 
siffht  of  his  misery  affected  his  wife  so  much  that  she 
fainted,  and  was  carried  senseless  to  her  chamber. 
The  prelates  who  were  in  waiting  had  from  the  first 
exhorted  him  to  prepare  for  his  end.  They  now 
thouo-ht  it  their  duty  to  address  him  in  a  still  more 
urgent  manner.  William  Saneroft,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, an  honest  and  pious,  though  narrowminded, 
man,  used  great  freedom.  ''  It  is  time,"  he  said,  "  to 
speak  out ;  for,  Sir,  you  are  about  to  appear  before  a 
Judge  who  is  no  respecter  of  persons."  The  King 
answered  not  a  word. 

Thomas  Ken,  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  then  tried 
his  [)o\vers  of  persuasion.  He  was  a  man  of  parts  and 
learning,  of  quick  sensibihty  and  stainless  virtue.  His 
elaborate  works  have  long  been  forgotten  ;  but  his 
morning  and  evening  hymns  are  still  repeated  daily  in 
thousands  of  dwellings.  Though,  like  most  of  liis 
order,  zealous  for  monarchy,  he  was  no  sycophant. 
Before  he  became  a  Bishop,  he    had   maintained  the 

VOL.  IJ.  2 


IG  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

honour  of  his  pown  bv  refusino;,  when  the  court  was  at 
Winchester,  to  let  Eleanor  Gwynn  lodge  in  the  house 
which  he  occupied  there  as  a  prebendary. ^  The  King 
had  sense  enough  to  respect  so  manly  a  spirit.  Of  all 
the  prelates  he  liked  Ken  the  best.  It  was  to  no  pur- 
pose, however,  that  the  good  Bishop  now  put  forth  all 
his  eloquence.  His  solemn  and  pathetic  exhortation 
awed  and  melted  the  bystanders  to  such  a  degree  that 
some  among  them  believed  him  to  be  filled  with  the 
same  spirit  which,  in  the  old  time,  had,  by  the  mouths 
of  Nathan  and  Elias,  called  sinful  princes  to  repent- 
ance. Charles  however  was  unmoved.  He  made  no 
objection  indeed  when  the  service  for  the  Visitation  of 
the  Sick  was  read.  In  reply  to  the  pressing  questions 
of  the  divines,  he  said  that  he  was  sorry  for  what  he 
had  done  amiss ;  and  he  suffered  the  absolution  to  be 
pronoiinced  over  him  according  to  tlie  forms  of  the 
Church  of  England  :  but,  when  he  was  uro-ed  to  de- 
clare  that  he  died  in  the  communion  of  that  Church, 
he  seemed  not  to  hear  what  was  said  ;  and  nothing 
could  induce  him  to  take  the  Eucharist  from  the  hands 
of  the  Bishops.  A  table  Avith  bread  and  wine  was 
brought  to  his  bedside,  but  in  vain.  Sometimes  he 
said  that  there  was  no  hurry,  and  sometimes  that  he 
was  too  weak. 

Many  attributed  this  apathy  to  contempt  for  divine 
thmgs,  and  many  to  the  stupor  which  often  precedes 
death.  But  there  were  in  the  palace  a  few  persons 
who  knew  better.  Charles  had  never  been  a  sincere 
member  of  the  Established  Church.  His  mind  had 
long  oscillated  between  Hobbism  and  Popery.  When 
his  health  was  good  and  his  spirits  high,  he  was  a 
scoffer.  In  his  few  serious  moments  he  was  a  Roman 
1  Hawkins's  Life  of  Ken,  1713. 


1686.]  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  17 

Catliolic.  The  Duke  of  York  was  aware  of  this,  but 
was  entirely  occupied  with  the  care  of  his  own  interests. 
He  had  ordered  the  outports  to  be  closed.  He  had 
posted  detachments  of  the  Gvmrds  in  different  parts 
of  the  City.  He  had  also  procured  the  feeble  signa- 
ture of  the  dying  King  to  an  instrument  by  which 
some  duties,  granted  only  till  the  demise  of  the  crown, 
were  let  to  farm  for  a  term  of  three  years.  These 
things  occupied  the  attention  of  James  to  such  a  de- 
gree that,  though,  on  ordinary  occasions,  he  was  indis- 
creetly and  unseasonably  eager  to  bring  over  prose- 
lytes to  his  Church,  he  never  reflected  that  his  brother 
was  in  danger  of  dying  without  the  last  sacraments. 
This  neglect  was  the  more  extraordinary  because  the 
Duchess  of  York  had,  at  the  request  of  the  Queen, 
suggested,  on  the  morning  on  which  the  King  was 
taken  ill,  the  propriety  of  procuring  spiritual  assistance. 
For  such  assistance  Charles  was  at  last  indebted  to  an 
agency  very  different  from  that  of  his  pious  wife  and 
sister  in  law.  A  life  of  frivolity  and  vice  had  not  ex- 
tinguished in  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth  all  sentiments 
of  religion,  or  all  that  kindness  which  is  the  glory  of 
her  sex.  The  French  Ambassador  Barillon,  who  had 
come  to  the  palace  to  inquire  after  the  King,  paid  her 
a  visit.  He  found  her  in  an  agony  of  sorrow.  She  took 
him  into  a  secret  room,  and  poured  out  her  whole  heart 
to  him.  "  I  have,"  she  said,  "  a  thing  of  great  mo- 
ment to  tell  you.  If  it  were  known,  my  head  would 
be  in  danger.  The  King  is  really  and  truly  a  Catho- 
lic ;  but  he  will  die  without  being  reconciled  to  the 
Church.  His  bedchamber  is  full  of  Protestant  clergy- 
men. I  cannot  enter  it  without  giving  scandal.  The 
Duke  is  thinking  only  of  himself.  Speak  to  him.  Re- 
mind him  that  there  is  a  soul  at  stake.     He  is  master 


18  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

now.     He  can  clear  the  room.     Go  tins  instant,  or  it 
will  be  too  late." 

Barillon  hastened  to  the  bedchamber,  took  the  Duke 
aside,  and  delivered  the  message  of  the  mistress.  The 
conscience  of  James  smote  him.  He  started  as  if 
roused  from  sleep,  and  declared  that  nothing  should 
prevent  him  from  discharging  the  sacred  duty  which 
had  been  too  long  delayed.  Several  schemes  were  dis- 
cussed and  rejected.  At  last  the  Duke  commanded  the 
crowd  to  stand  aloof,  went  to  the  bed,  stooped  down, 
and  whispered  something  which  none  of  the  spectators 
could  hear,  but  which  they  supposed  to  be  some  ques- 
tion about  affairs  of  state.  Charles  answered  in  an 
audible  voice,  "  Yes,  yes,  with  all  my  heart."  None 
of  the  bystanders,  except  the  French  Ambassador, 
guessed  that  the  King  was  declaring  his  wish  to  be 
admitted  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

"  Shall  I  bring  a  priest  ?  "  said  the  Duke.  "  Do, 
brother,"  replied  the  sick  man.  "■  For  God's  sake  do, 
and  lose  no  time.  But  no  ;  you  will  get  into  trouble." 
"  If  it  costs  rae  my  life,"  said  the  Duke,  "  I  will  fetch 
a  pi-iest." 

To  find  a  priest,  however,  for  such  a  purpose,  at  a 
moment's  notice,  was  not  easy.  For,  as  the  law  then 
stood,  the  person  who  admitted  a  proselyte  into  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  was  guilty  of  a  capital  crime. 
The  Count  of  Castel  Melhor,  a  Portuguese  nobleman, 
who,  driven  by  political  troubles  fi*om  his  native  land, 
had  been  hospitably  received  at  the  English  court,  un- 
dertook to  procure  a  confessor.  He  had  recourse  to 
nis  countrymen  who  belonged  to  the  Queen's  house- 
hold ;  but  he  found  that  none  of  her  chaplains  knew 
English  or  French  enough  to  shrive  the  Kino;,  The 
Duke  and  Barillon  were  about  to  send  to  the  Venetian 


1685.]  CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  19 

minister  for  a  clergyman,  when  they  heard  that  a  Ben- 
edictine monk,  named  John  Huddleston,  happened  to 
be  at  Whitehall.  This  man  had,  with  great  risk  to 
liimself,  saved  the  King's  life  after  the  battle  of 
Worcester,  and  had,  on  that  account,  been,  ever  since 
the  Restoration,  a  privileged  person.  In  the  shai'pest 
proclamations  which  had  been  put  forth  against  Popish 
j'l'iests,  when  false  witnesses  had  inflamed  the  nation 
to  fury,  Huddleston  had  been  excepted  by  name.^  He 
readily  consented  to  put  his  life  a  second  time  in  peril 
for  his  prince  ;  but  there  was  still  a  difficulty.  The 
honest  monk  was  so  illiterate  that  he  did  not  know 
what  he  ought  to  say  on  an  occasion  of  such  impor- 
tance. He  however  obtained  some  hints,  through  the 
intervention  of  Castel  Melhor,  from  a  Portuguese  ec- 
clesiastic, and,  thus  instructed,  was  brought  up  the  back 
stairs  by  Chiffinch,  a  confidential  servant,  wlio,  if  the 
satires  of  that  ac<-e  are  to  be  credited,  had  often  intro- 
duced  visitors  of  a  very  different  description  by  the 
same  entrance.  The  Duke  then,  in  the  King's  name, 
commanded  all  who  were  ])resent  to  quit  the  room, 
except  Lewis  Duras,  Earl  of  Feversham,  and  John 
Granville,  Earl  of  Bath.  Both  these  Lords  professed 
the  Protestant  rehoion  ;  but  James  conceived  that  he 
could  count  on  their  fidelity.  Feversham,  a  French- 
man of  noble  birth,  and  nephew  of  the  great  Turenne, 
held  high  rank  in  the  English  army,  and  was  Cham- 
berlain to  the  Queen.  Bath  was  Groom  of  the  Stole. 
The  Duke's  orders  were  obeyed,  and  even  the  phy- 
sicians withdrew.  The  back  door  was  then  opened, 
and  Father  Huddleston  entered.     A  cloak  had  been 

1  See  the  London  Gazette  of  Nov.  21.  1G78.  Barrillon  and  Burnet  say 
that  Huddleston  was  excepted  out  of  all  the  Acts  of  Parliament  made 
•gainst  priests ;  but  this  is  a  mistake. 


20  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

thrown  over  his  sacred  vestments,  and  his  shaven 
crown  was  concealed  by  a  flowing  wig.  "  Sir,"  said 
the  Duke,  "  this  good  man  once  saved  your  life.  He 
now  comes  to  save  your  soul."  Charles  faintly  an- 
swered, "  He  is  welcome."  Huddleston  went  throuo-h 
his  part  better  than  had  been  expected.  He  knelt  by 
the  bed,  listened  to  the  confession,  pronounced  the  ab- 
solution, and  administered  extreme  unction.  He  asked 
if  the  King  wished  to  receive  the  Lord's  supper. 
"  Surely,"  said  Charles,  "  if  I  am  not  unworthy." 
The  host  was  brought  in.  Charles  feebly  strove  to 
rise  and  kneel  before  it.  The  priest  bade  him  lie  still, 
and  assured  him  that  God  would  accept  the  humilia- 
tion of  the  soul,  and  would  not  require  the  humilia- 
tion of  the  body.  The  King  found  so  much  difficulty 
in  swallowing  the  bread  that  it  was  necessary  to  open 
the  door  and  to  procure  a  glass  of  water.  This  rite 
ended,  the  monk  held  up  a  crucifix  before  the  penitent^ 
charged  him  to  fix  his  last  thoughts  on  the  sufferings 
of  the  Redeemer,  and  withdrew.  The  whole  ceremony 
had  occupied  about  three  quarters  of  an  hour ;  and, 
during  that  time,  the  courtiers  who  filled  the  outer 
room  had  communicated  their  suspicions  to  each  other 
by  whispers  and  significant  glances.  The  door  was  at 
length  thrown  open,  and  the  crowd  again  filled  the 
chamber  of  death. 

It  was  now  late  in  the  evening.  The  King  seemed 
much  relieved  by  what  had  passed.  His  natural  chil- 
dren were  brought  to  his  bedside,  the  Dukes  of  Graf- 
ton, Southampton,  and  Northumberland,  sons  of  the 
Duchess  of  Cleveland,  the  Duke  of  Saint  Albans,  son 
of  Eleanor  Gwynn,  and  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  son 
of  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth.  Charles  blessed  them 
all,  but  spoke  with  peculiar  tenderness  to  Richmond. 


1685.]  CHARLES   THE   SECOND.  21 

One  face  which  should  have  been  there  was  wanting. 
The  eldest  and  best  beloved  child  was  an  exile  and  a 
wanderer.  His  name  was  not  once  mentioned  by  his 
father. 

During  the  night  Charles  earnestly  recommended 
the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth  and  her  boy  to  the  care  of 
James ;  *'  And  do  not,"  he  goodnaturedly  added,  "  let 
poor  Nelly  starve."  The  Queen  sent  excuses  for  her 
absence  by  Halifax.  She  said  that  she  was  too  mvich 
disordered  to  resume  her  post  by  the  couch,  and  im- 
plored pardon  for  any  offence  which  she  might  unwit- 
tingly have  given.  "  She  ask  my  pardon,  poor  woman  !  " 
cried  Charles  ;  "  I  ask  hers  with  all  my  heart." 

The  morning  light  began  to  peep  through  the  win- 
dows of  Whitehall ;  and  Charles  desired  the  attend- 
ants to  pull  aside  the  curtains,  that  he  might  have  one 
more  look  at  the  day.  He  remarked  that  it  was  time 
to  wind  up  a  clock  which  stood  near  his  bed.  These 
little  circumstances  were  long  remembered,  because 
they  proved  beyond  dispute  that,  when  he  declared 
himself  a  Roman  Catholic,  he  was  in  full  possession 
of  his  faculties.  He  apologized  to  those  who  had  stood 
round  him  all  night  for  the  trouble  which  he  had 
caused.  He  had  been,  he  said,  a  most  unconscionable 
time  dying ;  but  he  hoped  that  they  would  excuse  it. 
Tiiis  was  the  last  glimpse  of  that  exquisite  urbanity,  so 
often  found  potent  to  charm  away  the  resentment  of  a 
justly  incensed  nation.  Soon  after  dawn  the  speech  of 
the  dying  man  failed.  Before  ten  his  senses  were  gone. 
Great  numbers  had  repaired  to  the  churches  at  the 
hour  of  morning  service.  When  the  prayer  for  the 
King  was  read,  loud  groans  and  sobs  showed  how 
deeply  his  people  felt  for  him.  At  noon  on  Friday,  the 
sixth  of  February,  he  passed  away  without  a  struggle.^ 

1  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Sccoud,  i.  74G.  Oiig.  Mem.;  Barillun's  De- 


22  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

At  tliat  time  the  common  people  throughout  Europe, 
SuBpicions  ^"^  uowhere  more  than  in  England,  were  in 
of  poison.       the  habit  of  attributing  the  deaths  of  princes, 

spatch  of  Feb.  _8^.  1685 ;  Van  Citter's  De.spatches  of  Feb.  ^3^.  and  Feb.  -«-. ; 
Huddleston's  Narrative;  Letters  of  Philip,  second  Earl  of  Chesterfield 
277.;  Sir  H.  Ellis's  Original  Letters,  First  Series,  iii.  333.;  Second  Series.^ 
iv.  74.;  Chaillot  MS.;  Burnet,  i.  606.;  Evelyn's  Diaiy,  Feb.  4.  1684  ■ 
Welwood's  Memoirs,  140. ;  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  2S2. ;  Examen,  648. ; 
Hawkins's  Life  of  Ken ;  Drj'dcn's  Threnodla  Augustalis ;  Sir  H.  Halford's 
E.ssay  on  Deaths  of  Eminent  Persons.  See  also  a  fragment  of  a  letter 
which  Lord  Bruce  wrote  long  after  he  had  become  Earl  of  Ailesbury,  and 
which  is  printed  in  the  European  Magazine  for  April,  179.5.  Ailesburv 
calls  Burnet  an  impostor.  Yet  his  own  nan-ative  and  Burnet's  will  not,  to 
any  candid  and  sensible  reader,  appear  to  contradict  each  other.  I  have 
seen  in  the  British  Museum,  and  also  in  the  Library  of  the  lioyal  Institu- 
tion, a  curious  broadside  containing  an  account  of  the  death  of  Charles. 
It  will  be  found  in  the  Somers  Collection.  The  author  was  evidently  a 
zealous  Roman  Catholic,  and  must  have  had  access  to  good  sources  of  in- 
formation. I  strongly  suspect  that  he  had  been  in  communication,  directly 
or  indirectly,  with  James  himself.  No  name  is  given  at  length ;  but  the 
initials  are  perfectly  intelligible,  except  in  one  place.  It  is  said  that  the 
D.  of  Y.  was  reminded  of  the  duty  which  he  owed  to  his  brother  by  P.  M. 
A.  0.  F.  I  must  own  myself  quite  unable  to  decipher  the  last  five  letters. 
It  is  some  consolation  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  equally  unsuccessful. 
(1848.)  Since  the  first  edition  of  this  work  was  published,  several  verj'  in- 
genious conjectures  touching  these  mysterious  letters  have  been  communi- 
cated to  me;  but  I  am  convinced  that  the  true  solution  has  not  yet  been 
suggested.  (1850.)  1  still  greatly  doubt  whether  the  riddle  lias  been 
solved.  But  the  most  plausible  interpretation  is  one  which,  with  some  va- 
riations, occurred,  almost  at  the  same  time,  to  myself  and  to  several  other 
persons;  I  am  inclined  to  read  "  Pt;re  Mansuete  A  Cordelier  Friar."  Man- 
suete,  a  Coi'delier,  was  then  James's  confessor.  To  Mansuete  therefore  't 
peculiarly  belonged  to  remind  James  of  a  sacred  duty  which  had  been  cu  .- 
pably  neglected.  The  writer  of  the  broadside  must  have  been  unwilling 
to  inform  the  world  that  a  soul  which  many  devout  Eoman  Catholics  had 
left  to  perish  had  been  snatched  from  destruction  by  the  courageous  charity 
of  a  woman  of  loose  character.  It  is  therefore  not  unlikely  that  he  would 
prefer  a  fiction,  at  once  probable  and  edifying,  to  a  truth  which  could  not 
fail  to  give  scandal.     (1856.) 

It  should  seem  that  no  transactions  in  history  ought  to  be  more  accu- 
rately known  to  us  than  those  which  took  place  round  the  deathbed  of 
Charles  the  Second.  We  have  several  relations  written  by  persons  who 
were  actually  in  his  room.  We  have  several  relations  written  by  persons 
who,  though  not  themselves  eye  witnesses,  had  the  best  opportunities  of 
obtaining  information  from  eye  witnesses.  Yfet  whoever  attempts  to  digest 
this  vast  mass  of  materials  into  a  consistent  narrative  will  find  the  Uask  a 


1685.]  CHARLES   THE    SECOND.  23 

especially  when  the  prince  was  popular  and  the  death 
unexpected,  to  the  foulest  and  darkest  kind  of  assas- 
sination.    Thus  James  the  First  had  been  accused  of 
poisoning  Prince  Henry.     Thus  Charles  the  First  had 
been    accused    of   poisoning   James    the   First.     Thus 
when,  in  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  Princess 
Elizabeth  died   at  Carisbrook,  it   was   loudly  asserted 
that  Cromwell  had  stooped  to  the  senseless  and  das- 
tardly wickedness  of  mixing    noxious  drugs  with  the 
food  of  a   young   girl  whom  he  had  no  conceivable 
motive   to  injure.^     A  few  years  later,  the  rapid  de- 
composition   of  Cromwell's  own  corpse  was    ascribed 
by  many  to  a  deadly  potion  administered  in  his  medi- 
cine.    The  death  of  Ciiarles  the  Second  could  scarcely 
fail  to  occasion  similar  rumours.     The  public  ear  had 
been    repeatedly    abused    by    stories    of   Popish    plots 
against  his  life.     There  was,  therefore,  in  many  minds, 
a 'strong  predisposition  to  suspicion  ;    and  there  were 
some  unlucky  circumstances  which,  to  minds  so  pre- 
disposed, might  seem  to  indicate  that  a  crime  had  been 
])erpetrated.     The  fourteen  Doctors   who    deliberated 
on  the  King's  case  contradicted  each  other  and  them- 
selves.    Some  of  them  thought  that  his  fit  was  epilep- 

(lifficult  one.  Indeed  James  and  his  wife,  when  they  tohl  the  story  to  the 
nuns  of  C'haillot,  could  not  agree  as  to  some  circumstances.  The  Queen 
said  tliat,  after  Charles  had  received  the  last  Sacraments,  the  Protestant 
Bishops  renewed  their  exhortations.  The  King  said  that  nothing  of  the 
kind  took  place.  "  Surely,"  said  the  Queen,  "  you  told  me  so  yourself." 
'  It  is  impossible  that  I  could  have  told  you  ."o,"  said  the  King;  "  for  noth- 
ing of  the  sort  hap])cncd." 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  Sir  Henrj'  Ilaltbrd  should  have  taken  so 
little  trouble  to  ascertain  the  facts  on  which  he  pronounced  judgment,  ile 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  narratives  of 
James,  Barillon,  and  Iluddleston. 

'  l.'laiendon  nuMitions  this  c.ilumny  with  just  scorn.  "  According  to  the 
charity  of  the  time  towards  Cromwell,  very  many  would  have  it  believed 
to  be  by  poison,  of  which  there  was  no  appearance,  nor  any  proof  ever 
after  made."     Book  xiv. 


24  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  LCh.  FV 

tic,  and  that  he  should  be  suffered  to  have  his  doze 
out.  The  majority  pronounced  him  apoplectic,  and 
tortured  him  during  some  hours  like  an  Indian  at  a 
stake.  Tihen  it  was  determined  to  call  his  complaint 
a  fever,  and  to  administer  doses  of  bark.  One  phy- 
sician, however,  protested  against  this  course,  and 
assured  the  Queen  that  his  brethren  would  kill  the 
King  among  them.  Nothing  better  than  dissension 
and  vacillation  could  be  expected  from  such  a  multi- 
tude of  advisers.  But  many  of  the  vulgar  not  un- 
naturally concluded,  from  the  perplexity  of  the  great 
masters  of  the  healing  art,  that  the  malady  had  some 
extraordinary  origin.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that 
a  horrible  suspicion  did  actually  cross  the  mind  of 
Short,  who,  though  skilful  in  his  profession,  seems  to 
have  been  a  nervous  and  fmciful  man,  and  whose 
perceptions  were  probably  confused  by  dread  of  the 
odious  imputations  to  which  he,  as  a  Roman  Catholic, 
was  peculiarly  exposed.  We  cannot,  therefore,  won- 
der that  wild  stories  without  number  were  repeated 
and  believed  by  the  common  people.  His  Majesty's 
tonsue  had  swelled  to  the  size  of  a  neat's  tongue. 
A  cake  of  deleterious  powder  had  been  found  in  his 
brain.  There  were  blue  spots  on  his  breast.  There 
were  black  spots  on  his  shoulder.  Something  had 
been  put  into  his  snuff-box.  Something  had  been  put 
into  his  broth.  Something  had  been  put  into  his 
favourite  dish  of  eggs  and  ambergrease.  The  Duchess 
of  Portsmouth  had  poisoned  him  in  a  cup  of  chocolate. 
The  Queen  had  poisoned  him  in  a  jar  of  dried  pears. 
Such  tales  ought  to  be  preserved  ;  for  they  furnish  us 
with  a  measure  of  the  intellio;ence  and  virtue  of  the 
generation  which  eagerly  devoured  them.  That  no 
rumour  of  the  same  kind  has  ever,  in  the  present  age. 


I 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  25 

found  credit  among  us,  even  when  lives  on  which 
great  interests  depended  have  been  terminated  by 
unforeseen  attacks  of  disease,  is  to  be  attributed  partly 
to  the  progress  of  medical  and  chemical  science,  but 
partly  also,  it  may  be  hoped,  to  the  progress  which 
the  nation  has  made  in  good  sense,  justice,  and  hu- 
man itv.^ 

When  all  was  .over,  James  retired  from  the  bedside 
to  his  closet,  where,  during  a  quarter  of  an  gpeechof 
hour,  he  remained  alone.  Meanwhile  the  thrprily*" 
Privy  Councillors  who  were  in  the  palace  Council, 
assembled.  The  new  King  came  forth,  and  took  his 
place  at  the  head  of  the  board.  He  commenced  his 
administration,  according  to  usage,  by  a  speech  to  the 
Council.  He  expressed  his  regret  for  the  loss  which 
he  had  just  sustained,  and  he  promised  to  imitate  the 
singular  lenity  which  had  distinguished  the  late  reign. 
He  was  aware,  he  said,  that  he  had  been  accused  of  a 
fondness  for  arbitrary  power.  But  that  was  not  the 
only  falsehood  which  h.ad  been  told  of  him.  He  was 
resolved  to  maintain  the  established  government  both 
in  Church  and  State.  The  Church  of  Enoland  he 
knew  to  be  eminently  loyal.  It  should  therefore 
always  be  his  care  to  support  and  defend  her.  The 
laws  of  England,  he  also  knew,  were  sufficient  to 
make  him  as  great  a  King  as  he  could  wish  to  be. 
He  would  not  relinquish  his  own  rights  ;  but  lie  would 

1  Welwood,  139.;  Burnet,  i.  609.;  Sheffield's  Character  of  Charles  the 
Second;  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  2.")2.;  Exanien,  G48. ;  Revolution  Poli- 
tics; Ilifjgons  on  Unmet.  What  North  says  of  the  embarrassment  and 
vacillation  of  the  physicians  is  contirmed  by  the  despatches  of  Van  Citters. 
I  have  been  much  perplexed  by  liic  strange  story  about  Short's  suspicions. 
I  was,  at  one  time,  inclined  to  adopt  North's  solution.  But,  though  I 
attach  little  weight  to  the  authority  of  Welwood  and  Burnet  in  such  a 
case,  I  cannot  reject  the  testimony  of  so  well  informed  and  so  unwilling  a 
witness  as  IShetKeld. 


26  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV, 

respect  the  rights  of  others.  He  had  formerly  risked 
his  hfe  in  defence  of  his  country,  and  he  would  still 
go  as  far  as  any  man  in  support  of  her  just  liberties. 

This  speech  was  not,  like  modern  speeches  on  simi- 
lar occasions,  carefully  prepared  by  the  advisers  of  the 
sovereign.  It  was  the  extemporaneous  expression  of 
the  new  King's  feelings  at  a  moment  of  great  excite- 
ment. The  members  of  the  Council  broke  forth  into 
clamours  of  delight  and  gratitude.  The  Lord  Presi- 
dent, Rochester,  in  the  name  of  his  brethren,  expressed 
a  hope  that  His  Majesty's  most  Avelcome  declaration 
wovild  be  made  public.  The  Solicitor  General,  Hene- 
age  Fhich,  offered  to  act  as  clerk.  He  was  a  zealous 
churchman,  and,  as  such,  was  naturally  desirous  that 
there  should  be  some  permanent  record  of  the  gracious 
pronn'ses  which  had  just  been  uttered.  "  Those  prom- 
ises," he  said,  "  have  made  so  deep  an  impression  on 
me  that  I  can  repeat  them  word  for  word."  He  soon 
produced  his  report.  James  read  it,  approved  of  it, 
and  ordered  it  to  be  published.  At  a  later  period  he 
said  that  he  had  taken  this  step  without  due  considera- 
tion, that  his  unpremeditated  expressions  touching  the 
Chiu'ch  of  England  were  too  strong,  and  that  Finch 
had,  with  a  dexterity  which  at  the  time  escaped  notice, 
made  them  still  strono-er.^ 

The    King   had   been    exhausted   by  long  watching 

James  pro-  ^^^'^  ^Y  many  violent  emotions.  He  now  re- 
claimed,        ^ij.^^j  ^^  ^gg^_     rj^j^g  Pj.j^^^  Councillors,  having 

respectfully  accompanied  him  to  his  bedchamber,  re- 
turned to  their  seats,  and  issued  orders  for  the  cere- 
mony of  proclamation.  The  Guards  were  under  arms  ; 
the  heralds  appeared  in  their  gorgeous  coats;  and  the 


'  London  Gazette,  Feb.  9.  1084;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii 
8.;  Barillon,  Feb.  JL;  Evelyn's  l)i.an\  Feb-  6. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  27 

pageant  proceeded  without  any  obstruction.  Casks  of 
wine  were  broken  up  in  tlie  streets,  and  all  who  passed 
were  invited  to  drink  to  the  health  of  the  new  sover- 
eign. But,  though  an  occasional  shout  was  raised,  the 
people  were  not  in  a  joyous  mood.  Tears  were  seen 
in  many  eyes  ;  and  it  was  remarked  that  there  was 
scarcely  a  housemaid  in  London  who  had  not  contri  ved 
to  procure  some  fragment  of  black  crape  in  honour  of 
King  Charles.^ 

The  ftmeral  called  forth  much  censure.  It  would, 
indeed,  hardly  have  been  accounted  worthy  of  a  noble 
and  opulent  subject.  The  Tories  gently  blamed  the 
new  King's  parsimony ;  the  Whigs  sneered  at  his  want 
of  natural  affection;  and  the  fiery  Covenanters  of  Scot- 
land exultingly  proclaimed  that  the  curse  denounced 
of  old  against  wicked  princes  had  been  signally  ful- 
filled, and  that  the  departed  tyrant  had  been  buried 
with  the  burial  of  an  ass.^  Yet  James  commenced  his 
administration  with  a  large  measure  of  public  good  will. 
His  speech  to  the  Coimcil  appeared  in  print,  and  the 
impression  which  it  produced  was  highly  favourable  to 
him.  This,  then,  was  the  prince  whom  a  faction  had 
driven  into  exile  and  had  tried  to  rob  of  his  birthright, 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  deadly  enemy  to  the  re- 
ligion and  laws  of  England.  He  had  triumphed ;  he 
was  on  the  throne  ;  and  his  first  act  was  to  deckre 
that  he  would  defend  the  Church,  and  would  stricny 
respect  the  rights  of  his  people.  The  estimate  which 
all  parties  had  formed  of  his  character,  added  weight 
to  every  word  that  fell  from  him.  The  Whigs  called 
him  haughty,  imj)lacable,  obstinate,  regardless  of  public 

1  See  the  authorities  cited  in  the  last  note.    See  also  the  Examen,  647. ; 
Buniet,  i.  G2(). ;  Iliffgons  on  I'lirnet. 

2  London  CJa/.etle,  Fch.  H.  163i;  Evelyn's  Diary  of  the  same  day;  Bur- 
Det,  i.  GIO. ;  The  Hind  let  loose. 


28  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cu.  IV. 

opinion.  The  Tories,  Avhile  they  extolled  his  princely 
virtues,  had  often  lamented  his  neglect  of  the  arts 
which  conciliate  popularity.  Satire  itself  had  never 
represented  him  as  a  man  likely  to  court  public  favour 
by  professing  what  he  did  not  feel,  and  by  promising 
what  he  had  no  intention  of  performing.  On  the 
Sunday  which  followed  his  accession,  his  speech  was 
quoted  in  many  pulpits.  "  We  have  now  for  our 
Church,"  cried  one  loyal  preacher,  "the  word  of  a 
King,  and  of  a  King  who  was  never  worse  than  his 
word."  This  pointed  sentence  was  fast  circulated 
through  town  and  country,  and  was  soon  the  watch- 
word of  the  whole  Tory  party. ^ 

The  great  offices  of  state  had  become  vacant  by  the 
state  of  the  demise  of  the  croAvn  ;  and  it  was  necessary 
tion.  for  James  to  determine  how  they  should  be 

filled.  Few  of  the  members  of  the  late  cabinet  had 
any  reason  to  expect  his  favour.  Sunderland,  who  was 
Secretary  of  State,  and  Godolphin,  who  was  First 
Lord  of  the  Treasury,  had  supported  the  Exclusion 
Bill.  Halifax,  who  held  the  Privy  Seal,  had  opposed 
that  bill  with  unrivalled  powers  of  argument  and  elo- 
quence. But  Halifax  was  the  mortal  enemy  of  des- 
potism and  of  Popery.  He  saw  with  dread  the  prog- 
ress of  the  French  arms  on  the  continent,  and  the  in- 
fluence of  French  o-old  in  the  counsels  of  Enoland. 
Had  his  advice  been  followed,  the  laws  would  have 
been  strictly  observed ;  clemency  would  have  been 
extended  to  the  vanquished  Whigs :  the  Parliament 
would  have  been  convoked  in  due  season  ;  an  attempt 
would  have  been  made  to  reconcile  our  domestic  fac- 
tions ;  and  the  principles  of  the  Triple  Alliance  would 
again  have  guided  our  foreign  policy.  He  had  there- 
1  Bumet,  i.  628. ;  Lestrange,  Observator,  Feb.  11. 16a|. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  29 

fore  incurred  tlie  bitter  animosity  of  James.  The  Lord  * 
Keeper  Guildford  could  hardl}''  be  said  to  belong  to 
either  of  the  parties  into  which  tlie  court  was  divided. 
He  could  by  no  means  be  called  a  friend  of  liberty ; 
and  yet  he  had  so  great  a  reverence  for  the  letter  of 
the  law  that  he  was  not  a  serviceable  tool  of  arbitrary 
power.  He  was  accordingly  designated  by  the  vehe- 
ment Tories  as  a  Trimmer,  and  was  to  James  an  ob- 
ject of  aversion  with  which  contempt  was  largely  nnn- 
gled.  Ormond,  Avho  was  Lord  Steward  of  the  House- 
hold and  Viceroy  of  Ireland,  then  resided  at  Dublin. 
His  claims  on  the  royal  gratitude  were  superior  to  those 
of  any  other  subject.  He  had  fought  bravely  for 
Charles  the  First ;  he  had  shared  the  exile  of  Charles 
the  Second ;  and,  since  the  Restoration,  he  had,  in 
spite  of  many  provocations,  kept  his  loyalty  unstained. 
Though  he  had  been  disgraced  during  the  predomi- 
nance of  the  Cabal,  he  had  never  gone  into  factious 
opposition,  and  had,  in  the  days  of  the  Popish  Plot  and 
the  Exclusion  Bill,  been  foremost  among  the  support- 
ers of  the  throne.  He  was  now  old,  and  had  been  re- 
cently tried  by  the  most  cruel  of  all  calamities.  He  had 
followed  to  the  grave  a  son  who  should  have  been  his 
own  chief  mourner,  the  gallant  Ossory.  The  eminent 
services,  the  venerable  age,  and  the  domestic  misfortunes 
of  Ormond  made  him  an  object  of  general  interest  to 
the  nation.  The  Cavaliers  regarded  him  as,  both  bv 
right  of  seniority  and  by  right  of  merit,  their  head;  and 
the  Whigs  knew  that,  faithful  as  he  had  always  been  to 
thi;  cause  of  monarchy,  he  was  no  friend  either  to  Po- 
pery or  to  arbitrary  power.  But,  high  as  he  stood  in 
the  public  estimation,  he  had  little  favour  to  expect  from 
his  new  master.  James,  indeed,  while  still  a  subject, 
had  urged  his  brother  to  make  a  complete  change  in 


30  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  IV. 

*  tiie  Irish  administration.  Charles  had  assented  ;  and 
it  had  been  arranged  that,  in  a  few  months,  there 
should  be  a  new  Lord  Lieutenant.^ 

Rochester  was  the  only  member  of  the  cabinet  who 
New  arrange-  stood  high  in  the  favour  of  the  King.  The 
ments.  general  expectation  was  that  he  would  be  im- 

mediately placed  at  the  head  of  affairs,  and  that  all  the 
other  great  officers  of  state  would  be  changed.  This 
expectation  proved  to  be  well  founded  in  part  only. 
Rochester  was  declared  Lord  Treasui'cr,  and  thus  be- 
came prime  minister.  Neither  a  Lord  High  Admiral, 
nor  a  Board  of  Admiralty  was  appointed.  The  new 
King,  who  loved  the  details  of  naval  business,  and 
would  have  made  a  respectable  clerk  in  the  dockyard 
at  Chatham,  determined  to  be  his  own  minister  of  ma- 
rine. Under  him  the  management  of  that  important 
department  was  confided  to  Samuel  Pepys,  whose  li- 
brary and  diary  have  kept  his  name  fresh  to  our  time. 
No  servant  of  the  late  sovereign  was  publicly  disgraced. 
Sunderland  exerted  so  much  art  and  address,  employed 
so  many  intercessors,  and  was  in  possession  of  so  many 
secrets,  that  he  was  suffered  to  retain  his  seals.  Go- 
dolphin's  obsequiousness,  industry,  experience,  and 
taciturnity,  could  ill  be  spared.  As  he  was  no  longer 
wanted  at  the  Treasury,  he  was  made  Chamberlain  to 
the  Queen.  With  these  three  Lords  the  Khig  took 
counsel  on  all  important  questions.  As  to  Halifax, 
Ormond,  and  Guildford,  he  determined  not  yet  to  dis- 
miss them,  but  merely  to  humble  and  annoy  them. 

Halifax  was  told  that  he  must  give  up  the  Privy 
Seal  and  accept  the  Presidency  of  the  Council.  He 
submitted  with  extreme  reluctance.     For,  though  tlie 

1  The  letters  which  passed  between  Rochester  and  Orinond  ot  'bis  sub- 
ject will  be  found  in  the  Clarendon  Correspondence. 


less.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  31 

President  of  tlie  Council  had  always  taken  precedence 
of  the  Lord  Privy  Seal,  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  was,  in 
that  age,  a  much  more  important  officer  than  the  Lord 
President.  Rochester  had  not  forgotten  the  jest  which 
had  been  made  a  few  months  before  on  his  own  re- 
moval from  the  Treasury,  and  enjoyed  in  his  turn  the 
pleasure  of  kicking  his  rival  up  stairs.  The  Privy 
Seal  Avas  delivered  to  Rochester's  elder  brother,  Henry 
Earl  of  Clarendon. 

To  Barillon  James  expressed  the  strongest  dislike  of 
Halifax.  "  I  know  him  well,  I  never  can  trust  him. 
He  shall  have  no  share  in  the  management  of  public 
business.  As  to  the  place  which  I  have  given  him,  it 
will  just  serve  to  show  how  little  influence  he  has." 
But  to  Halifax  it  was  thought  convenient  to  hold  a 
very  different  language.  "  All  the  past  is  forgotten," 
said  the  King,  "  except  the  service  which  you  did  me 
in  the  debate  on  the  Exclusion  Bill."  This  speech 
has  often  been  cited  to  prove  that  James  was  not  so 
vindictive  as  he  has  been  called  by  his  enemies.  It 
seems  rather  to  prove  that  he  by  no  means  deserved 
the  praises  which  have  been  bestowed  on  his  sincerity 
by  his  friends.^ 

Ormond  was  politely  informed  that  his  services  were 
no  longer  needed  in  Ireland,  and  was  invited  to  repair 
to  Whitehall,  and  to  perform  the  functions  of  Lord 
Steward.  He  dutifully  submitted,  but  did  not  affect  to 
deny  that  the  new  arrangement  wounded  his  feelings 
deeply.  On  the  eve  of  his  departure  he  gave  a  mag- 
nificent banquet  at  Kilmainham  Hospital,  then  just 
completed,  to  the  officers  of  the  garrison  of  Dublin. 
After  dinner  lie  rose,  filled  a  goblet  to  the  brim  with 

J-  The  ministerial  changes  arc  announced  in  the  London  Gazette,  Fcib. 
19.  1G8|.     See  Burnet,  i.  G21.;    Harillon,  I'eb.  ^g^g-;  and  *^'^ 
vol..  II.  3 


32  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  FV 

wine,  and,  liolding  it  up,  asked  whether  he  had  spilt 
one  drop.  "  No,  gentlemen ;  whatever  the  courtiers 
may  say,  I  am  not  yet  sunk  into  dotage.  My  hand 
does  not  fail  me  yet ;  and  my  hand  is  not  steadier  than 
my  heart.  To  the  health  of  King  James !  "  Such 
was  the  last  farewell  of  Ormond  to  Ireland.  He  left 
the  administration  in  the  hands  of  Lord  Justices,  and 
repaired  to  London,  where  he  was  received  with  un- 
usual max'ks  of  public  respect.  Many  persons  of  rank 
went  forth  to  meet  him  on  the  road.  A  Ions;  train 
of  equipages  followed  him  into  Saint  James's  Square, 
where  his  mansion  stood  ;  and  the  Square  was  thronged 
by  a  multitude  which  greeted  him  with  loud  acclama- 
tion s.^ 

The  Great  Seal  was  left  in  Guildford's  custody :  but 
Sir  George  ^  marked  indignity  was  at  the  same  time  of- 
jeffreys.  fered  to  him.  It  was  determined  that  another 
lawyer  of  more  vigour  and  audacity  should  be  called 
to  assist  in  the  administration.  The  person  selected 
was  Sir  Geoi'ge  Jeffreys,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Court  of 
King's  Bfench.  The  depravity  of  this  man  has  passed 
into  a  proverb.  Both  the  great  English  parties  have 
attacked  his  memory  with  emulous  violence :  for  the 
Whigs  considered  him  as  their  most  barbarous  enemy ; 
and  the  Tories  found  it  convenient  to  throw  on  him 
the  blame  of  all  the  crimes  which  had  sullied  their  tri- 
umph. A  diligent  and  candid  inquiry  will  show  that 
some  frightful  stories  which  have  been  told  concerning 
him  are  false  or  exaggerated.  Yet  the  dispassionate 
historian  will  be  able  to  make  very  little  deduction 
from  the  vast  mass  of  infamy  with  which  the  memoiT 
of  the  wicked  judge  has  been  loaded. 

»  Carte's  Life  of  Ormond ;  Secret  Consults  of  the  Romish  Party  in  Ire- 
land, 1690;  Memoirs  of  Ireland,  1716. 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  33 

He  was  a  man  of  quick  and  vigorous  parts,  but  con- 
stitutionally prone  to  insolence  and  to  the  angry  pas- 
sions. When  just  emerging  from  boyhood  he  had 
risen  into  practice  at  the  Old  Bailey  bar,  a  bar  where 
advocates  have  always  used  a  license  of  tongue  un- 
known in  Westminster  Hall.  Here,  during  many 
vears,  his  chief  business  was  to  examine  and  crossex- 
amine  the  most  hardened  miscreants  of  a  gi'eat  capital. 
Daily  conflicts  with  prostitutes  and  thieves  called  out 
and  exercised  his  powei's  so  effectually  that  he  became 
the  most  consummate  bully  ever  known  in  his  profes- 
sion. Tenderness  for  others  and  respect  for  himself  were 
feelings  alike  unknown  to  him.  He  acquired  a  bound- 
less command  of  the  rhetoric  in  which  the  vulgar  express 
hatred  and  contemj)t.  The  profusion  of  maledictions 
and  vituperative  ei)ithets  which  composed  his  vocabu- 
lary could  hardly  have  been  rivalled  in  the  fishmarket 
or  the  bearijarden.  His  countenance  and  his  voice 
must  always  have  been  unamiable.  But  these  natural 
advantages,  —  for  such  he  seems  to  have  thought  them, 
—  he  had  improved  to  such  a  degree  that  there  were 
few  wlio,  in  his  paroxysms  of  rage,  could  see  or  hear 
him  without  emotion.  Impudence  and  ferocity  sate 
upon  his  brow.  The  glare  of  his  eyes  had  a  fascina- 
tion for  the  unha]>py  victim  on  whom  they  were  fixed. 
Yet  his  brow  and  his  eye  were  less  terrible  than  the 
savage  lines  of  his  mouth.  His  yell  of  fiiry,  as  was 
said  by  one  who  had  often  heard  it,  sounded  like  the 
thunder  of  the  judgment  day.  These  qualifications 
he  carried,  while  still  a  young  man,  from  the  bar  to 
the  bench.  He  early  became  Common  Serjeant  and 
then  Recorder  of  London.  As  a  judge  at  the  City 
sessions  he  exhibited  the  same  propensities  which  after- 


84  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

wards,  in  a  higher  post,  gained  for  him  an  unenviablt 
immortahty.  Ah-eady  might  be  remarked  in  liim  the 
most  odious  vice  which  is  incident  to  human  nature,  a 
dehght  in  misery  merely  as  miseiy.  There  was  a 
fiendish  exultation  in  the  way  in  which  he  pronounced 
sentence  on  offenders.  Their  weeping  and  imploring 
seemed  to  titillate  him  voluptuously ;  and  he  loved  to 
scare  them  into  fits  by  dilating  with  luxuriant  amplifi- 
cation on  all  the  details  of  what  they  M^ere  to  suffer. 
Thus,  when  he  had  an  opportunity  of  ordei'ing  an  un- 
lucky adventuress  to  be  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail, 
"  Hangman,"  he  would  exclaim,  "  I  charge  you  to  pay 
particular  attention  to  this  lady  !  Scourge  her  soundly, 
man.  Scourge  her  till  the  blood  runs  down  !  It  is 
Christmas,  a  cold  time  for  Madam  to  strip  in  !  See 
that  you  warm  her  shoulders  thoroughly !  "  ^  He  was 
hardly  less  facetious  when  he  passed  judgment  on  poor 
Lodowick  Muggleton,  the  drunken  tailor  who  fancied 
liimself  a  prophet.  "  Impudent  rogue  !  "  roared  Jef^ 
freys,  "  thou  shalt  have  an  easy,  easy,  easy  punishment ! " 
One  part  of  this  easy  punishment  was  the  pillory,  in 
which  the  wretched  fanatic  was  almost  killed  with 
brickbats.^ 

By  this  time  the  heart  of  Jeffreys  had  been  hard- 
ened to  that  temper  which  tyrants  require  in  their 
worst  implements.  He  had  hitherto  looked  for  profes- 
sional advancement  to  the  corporation  of  London.  He 
had  therefore  professed  himself  a  Roundhead,  and  had 
always  appeared  to  be  in  a  higher  state  of  exhilaration 
when  he  explained  to  Popish  priests  that  they  were  to 

1  Christmas  Sessions  Paper  of  1678. 

'2  The  Acts  of  the  Witnesses  of  the  Spirit,  part  v.  chapter  v.  In  this 
V,  ork,  Lodowick,  after  his  fasliion,  revenges  himself  on  the  "  bawling 
devil,"  as  he  calls  Jetfieys,  by  a  string  of  curses  which  Ernulphus,  or  Jef' 
frej's  himself,  might  have  envied.    The  trial  was  in  January,  1677. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  35 

be  cut  down  alive,  and  were  to  see  their  own  bowels 
burned,  than  when  he  passed  ordinary  sentences  of 
death.  But,  as  soon  as  he  had  got  all  that  the  City 
could  o;ive,  he  made  haste  to  sell  his  forehead  of  brass 
and  his  tongue  of  venom  to  the  Court.  Chiffinch,  who 
was  accustomed  to  act  as  broker  in  infamous  contracts 
of  more  than  one  kind,  lent  his  aid.  He  had  con- 
ducted many  amorous  and  many  political  intrigues; 
but  he  assuredly  never  rendered  a  more  scandalous 
service  to  his  masters  than  when  he  introduced  Jeffreys 
to  Whitehall.  The  renegade  soon  found  a  patron  in 
the  obdurate  and  revengeful  James,  but  was  always 
regarded  with  scorn  and  disgust  by  Charles,  whose 
faults,  great  as  they  were,  had  no  affinity  Avitli  inso- 
lence and  cruelty.  "  That  man,"  said  the  King,  "  has 
no  learning,  no  sense,  no  manners,  and  more  impu- 
dence than  ten  carted  streetwalkers."  ^  Work  was 
to  be  done,  however,  which  could  be  trusted  to  no 
man  who  reverenced  law  or  was  sensible  of  shame  ; 
and  thus  Jeffreys,  at  an  age  at  which  a  barrister  thinks 
liimself  fortunate  if  he  is  employed  to  conduct  an  im- 
portant cause,  was  made  Chief  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench. 

His  enemies  could  not  deny  that  he  possessed  some 
of  the  qualities  of  a  great  judge.  His  legal  knowledge, 
indeed,  was  merely  such  as  he  had  picked  up  in  prac- 
tice of  no  very  high  kind.  But  he  had  one  of  those 
happily  constituted  ijitellects  which,  across  labyrinths 
of  soj)histry,  and  through  masses  of  immaterial  facts, 
go  straight  to  the  true  point.  Of  his  intellect,  how- 
ever, he  seldom  had  the  full  use.  Even  in  civil  causes 
his  malevolent  and  despotic  temper  perpetually  disor- 

1  This  saying  is  to  bo  found  in  many  contemporary  pamphlets.     Titua 
Gates  was  never  tired  of  quoting  it.     Sec  his  EIkuv  BaaiTuKT/. 


36  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

dered  his  judgment.  To  enter  his  court  was  to  enter 
the  den  of  a  wild  beast,  which  none  could  tame,  and 
which  was  as  hkely  to  be  roused  to  rage  by  caresses  as 
by  attacks.  He  frequently  poured  forth  on  plaintiffs 
and  defendants,  barristers  and  attorneys,  Avitnesses  and 
jurymen,  torrents  of  frantic  abuse,  intermixed  with 
oaths  and  curses.  His  looks  and  tones  had  inspired 
terror  when  he  was  merely  a  young  advocate  strug- 
gling into  practice.  Now  that  he  was  at  the  head  of  the 
most  formidable  tribunal  in  the  realm,  there  were  few 
indeed  who  did  not  tremble  before  him.  Even  when 
he  was  sober,  his  violence  was  sufficiently  frightful. 
But  in  general  his  reason  was  overclouded  and  his  evil 
passions  stimulated  by  the  fumes  of  intoxication.  His 
evenings  were  ordinarily  given  to  revelry.  People 
who  sav\'  him  only  over  his  bottle  would  have  supposed 
him  to  be  a  man  gross  indeed,  sottish,  and  addicted  to 
low  company  and  low  merriment,  but  social  and  good- 
humoured.  He  was  constantly  suri'ounded  on  such 
occasions  by  buffoons  selected,  for  the  most  part,  from 
among  the  vilest  pettifoggers  who  practised  before 
him.  These  men  bantered  and  abused  each  other  for 
his  entertainment.  He  joined  in  their  ribald  talk, 
sang  catches  with  them,  and,  when  his  head  grew  hot, 
hugged  and  kissed  them  in  an  ecstacy  of  drunken 
fondness.  But,  though  wine  at  first  seemed  to  soften 
his  heart,  the  effect  a  few  hours  later  was  verv  differ- 
ent.  He  often  came  to  the  iudg-ment  seat,  havincr 
kept  the  coui-t  waiting  long,  and  yet  having  but  half 
slept  off  his  debauch,  his  cheeks  on  fire,  his  eyes  star- 
ing like  those  of  a  maniac.  When  he  was  in  this 
state,  his  boon  companions  of  the  preceding  night,  if 
they  were  wise,  ke])t  out  of  his  way :  for  the  recollec- 
tion of  the  familiarity  to  Avhich  he  had  admitted  them 


1685.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  37 

inflamed  his  malignity  ;  and  he  was  sure  to  take  every 
opportunity  of  overwhehning  them  with  execration  ana 
invective.  Not  the  least  odious  of  his  many  odious 
peculiarities  was  the  pleasure  which  he  took  in  publicly 
browbeating  and  mortifying  those  whom,  in  his  fits  of 
maudlin  tenderness,  he  had  encouraged  to  presume  on 
his  favour. 

The  services  Avhich  the  government  had  expected 
from  him  were  performed,  not  merely  without  flinch- 
inii-,  but  eagerly  and  ti'iumphantly.  His  first  exploit 
was  the  judicial  murder  of  Algernon  Sidney.  What 
followed  was  in  perfect  harmony  with  this  beginning. 
Respectable  Tories  lamented  the  disgrace  which  the 
barbarity  and  indecency  of  so  great  a  functionary 
brought  upon  the  administration  of  justice.  But  the 
excesses  which  filled  such  men  with  horror  were  titles 
to  the  esteem  of  James.  Jeffi-eys,  therefore,  very  soon 
after  the  death  of  Charles,  obtained  a  seat  in  the  cabi- 
net and  a  peerage.  This  last  honour  was  a  signal  mark 
of  royal  approbation.  For,  since  the  judicial  system  of 
the  realm  had  been  remodelled  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, no  Chief  Justice  had  been  a  Lord  of  Parlia- 
ment.^ 

Guildford  now  found  himself  superseded  in  all  his 
political  functions,  and  restricted  to  his  business  as  a 
judge  in  ecpiity.  At  Council  he  was  treated  by  Jef- 
freys with  marked  incivility.  The  whole  legal  patron- 
age was  in  the  hands  of  the  Chief  Justice  ;  and  it  was 


'  'Ihe  chief  sources  of  information  concerning  Jeffreys  are  the  State 
Trials  and  North's  Life  of  Lord  Guildford.  Some  touches  of  minor  inipor- 
laiu'e  I  owe  to  conteiiiporary  jjauiphlets  in  verse  and  prose.  Such  arc  llic 
Hloody  Assizes,  the  Life  and  i)eath  of  George  Lord  .Jellreys,  the  I'aneiiyric 
Dn  the  late  T-ord  Jctlreys,  the  Letter  to  the  Lord  Chancellor,  .leflVeys's 
I'.U-ixy.  See  also  Evelyn's  Diary,  Dec.  .5.  1083,  Oct.  ."Jl.  108.5.  I  scarcely 
need  advise  every  reader  to  consult  Lmd  C;iiii|il)e.ll's  excellent  Life  of  Jef- 
freys. 


38  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

well  known  by  the  bar  that  the  surest  way  to  propitiate 
the  Chief  Justice  was  to  treat  the  Lord  Keeper  with 
disrespect. 

James  had  not  been  many  hours  king  when  a  dis- 
The  revenue  P^^^  arosc  between  the  two  heads  of  the  law. 
out'anlct'of"  The  customs  had  been  settled  on  Charles 
I'uriiameut.     ^j^]^^  f^^.  j^fg^  ^^^^j  p^^]^  ^^^  therefore  be  le- 

gaily  exacted  by  the  new  sovereign.  Some  weeks 
must  elapse  before  a  House  of  Commons  could  be 
chosen.  If,  in  the  meantime,  the  duties  were  sus- 
pended, the  revenue  would  suffer  ;  the  regular  course 
to  trade  would  be  interrupted  ;  the  consumer  would 
derive  no  benefit ;  and  the  only  gainers  would  be  those 
fortunate  speculators  whose  cargoes  might  happen  to 
arrive  during  the  interval  between  the  demise  of  the 
crown  and  the  meeting  of  the  Parliament.  The  Treas- 
ury was  besieged  by  merchants  whose  warehouses  were 
filled  with  goods  on  which  duty  had  been  paid,  and 
who  were  in  grievous  apprehension  of  being  undersold 
and  ruined.  Impartial  men  must  admit  that  this  was 
one  of  those  cases  in  which  a  government  may  be 
justified  in  deviating  fi'om  the  strictly  constitutional 
course.  But,  when  it  is  necessary  to  deviate  from  the 
strictly  constitutional  course,  the  deviation  clearly  ought 
to  be  no  greater  than  the  necessity  requires.  Guild- 
■ford  felt  this,  and  gave  advice  which  did  him  honour. 
He  proposed  that  the  duties  should  be  levied,  but 
should  be  kept  in  the  Exchequer  apart  from  other 
sums  till  the  Parliament  should  meet.  In  this  way 
tlie  King,  while  violating  the  letter  of  the  laws,  would 
show  that  he  wished  to  conform  to  their  spirit.  Jef- 
freys gave  very  different  counsel.  He  advised  James 
to  put  forth  an  edict  declai'ing  it  to  be  His  Majesty's 
will  and  pleasure  that  the  customs  should  continue  to 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  39 

be  paid.  Tliis  advice  was  well  suited  to  the  King's 
temper.  The  judicious  proposition  of  the  Lord  Keeper 
was  rejected  as  worthy  only  of  a  Whig,  or  of  what  Avas 
still  worse,  a  Trimmer.  A  proclamation,  such  as  the 
Chief  Justice  had  suggested,  appeared.  Some  people 
expected  that  a  violent  outbreak  of  public  indignation 
Avould  be  the  consequence  :  but  they  were  deceived. 
The  spirit  of  opposition  had  not  yet  revived  ;  and  the 
court  might  safely  venture  to  take  steps  which,  five 
years  before,  would  have  produced  a  rebellion.  In  the 
City  of  London,  lately  so  turbulent,  scarcely  a  murmur 
was  heard. ^ 

The  proclamation,  which  announced  that  the  cus- 
toms would  still  be  levied,  announced  also  APariiameut 
that  a  Parliament  would  shoi-tly  meet.  It  "^"^ 
was  not  without  many  misgivings  that  James  had  de- 
termined to  call  the  Estates  of  his  realm  together. 
The  moment  was,  indeed,  most  auspicious  for  a  gen- 
eral election.  Never  since  the  accession  of  the  House 
of  Stuart  had  the  constituent  bodies  been  so  favourably 
disposed  towards  the  court.  But  the  new  sovereign's 
mind  was  haunted  by  an  apprehension  not  to  be  men- 
tioned, even  at  this  distance  of  time,  without  shame 
and  indignation.  He  was  afraid  that  bv  summoning 
his  Parliament  he  might  incur  the  displeasure  of  the 
Kino;  of  Fi-ance. 

To  the  Kino;  of  France  it  mattered  little  which  of 
the    two  Enolish  factions  triumphed    at    the 
elections  :  for  all  the  Parliaments  which  had   between 

.  ■  .     ,         ■lanii'S  and 

met    smce   the  Restoration,   whatever  niiglit  the  French 
have  been  their  temper  as  to  domestic  poli- 
tics, had    been   jealous  of  the  growing  ])ower  of  the 
House  of  Bourbon.     On  this  subject  there  was  little 

1  London  Gazette,  Feb.  12.  168|.     North's  Life  of  Guildford,  254. 


40  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Cii.  IV. 

difference  between  the  Whigs  and  the  sturdy  country 
gentlemen  who  formed  the  main  strength  of  the  Tory 
party.  Lewis  had  therefore  spared  neither  bribes  nor 
menaces  to  prevent  Charles  from  convoking  the 
Houses  ;  and  James,  who  had  fi'om  the  first  been  in 
the  secret  of  his  brother's  foreign  pohtics,  had,  in  be- 
coming King  of  England,  become  also  a  hireling  and 
irassal  of  France. 

Rochester,  Godolphin,  and  Sunderland,  who  now 
formed  the  interior  cabinet,  were  perfectly  aware  that 
their  late  master  had  been  in  the  habit  of  receiving 
money  from  the  court  of  Versailles.  They  were  con- 
sulted by  James  as  to  the  expediency  of  convoking  the 
legislature.  They  acknowledged  the  importance  of 
keeping  Lewis  in  good  humour :  but  it  seemed  to  them 
that  the  calling  of  a  Parliament  was  not  a  matter  of 
choice.  Patient  as  the  nation  appeared  to  be,  there 
were  limits  to  its  patience.  The  principle  that  the 
money  of  the  subject  could  not  be  lawfully  taken  by 
the  King  without  the  assent  of  the  Commons,  was 
firmly  rooted  in  the  public  mind  ;  and  though,  on  an 
extraordinary  emergency,  even  Whigs  might  be  will- 
ing to  pay,  during  a  few  weeks,  duties  not  imposed  by 
statute,  it  was  certain  that  even  Tories  would  become 
refractory  if  such  irregular  taxation  should  continue 
longer  than  the  special  circumstances  which  alone  jus- 
tified it.  The  Houses  then  must  meet ;  and,  since  it 
was  so,  the  sooner  they  were  summoned  the  better. 
Even  the  short  delay  which  would  be  occasioned  by  a 
reference  to  Versailles  might  produce  irreparable  mis- 
chief. Discontent  and  suspicion  would  spread  fast 
through  society.  Halifax  would  complain  that  the 
fundamental  principles  of  the  constitution  were  vio- 
lated.    The    Lord    Keeper,  like    a  cowardly  pedantic 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  41 

special  pleader  as  he  was,  would  take  the  same  side. 
What  might  have  been  done  with  a  good  grace  would 
at  last  be  done  with  a  bad  grace.  Those  very  minis- 
ters whom  His  Majesty  most  wished  to  lower  in  the 
public  estimation  would  gain  popularity  at  his  expense. 
The  ill  temper  of  the  nation  might  seriously  affect  the 
result  of  the  elections.  These  arguments  were  unan- 
swerable. The  King  therefore  notified  to  the  country 
his  intention  of  holding  a  Parliament.  But  he  was 
painfully  anxious  to  exculpate  himself  from  the  guilt 
of  having  acted  undutifully  and  disrespectfully  towards 
France.  He  led  Barillon  into  a  private  room,  and 
there  apologized  for  having  dared  to  take  so  important 
a  step  without  the  previous  sanction  of  Lewis.  "  As- 
sure your  master,"  said  James,  "  of  my  gratitude  and 
attachment.  I  know  that  without  his  protection  I  can 
do  nothing.  I  know  what  troubles  my  brother  brought 
on  himself  by  not  adhering  steadily  to  France.  I  will 
take  good  care  not  to  let  the  Houses  meddle  with  i'or- 
eign  affairs.  If  I  see  in  them  any  disposition  to  make 
mischief,  I  will  send  them  about  their  business.  Ex- 
plain this  to  my  good  brother.  I  hope  that  he  will  not 
take  it  amiss  that  I  have  acted  without  consulting  him. 
He  has  a  right  to  be  consulted  ;  and  it  is  my  wish  to 
consult  him  about  everything.  But  in  this  case  the 
delay  even  of  a  week  might  have  produced  serious 
consequences." 

These  ignominious  excuses  were,  on  the  following 
morning,  repeated  by  Rochester.  Barillon  received 
them  civilly.  Rochester,  grown  bolder,  proceeded  to 
ask  for  money.  "  It  will  be  well  laid  out,"  he  said  ; 
"  your  master  cannot  employ  his  revenues  better. 
Represent  to  him  strongly  how  important  it  is  that 
the     Kino-    of    Euirland    should    be    dependent,    not 


42  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IT. 

on  Ills  own  people,  but  on  the  friendship  of  France 
alone."  ^ 

Barillon  hastened  to  communicate  to  Lewis  the 
wishes  of  the  English  government ;  but  Lewis  had 
already  anticipated  them.  His  first  act,  after  he  was 
apprised  of  the  death  of  Charles,  was  to  collect  bills  of 
exchancre  on  England  to  the  amount  of  five  hundred 
thousand  livres,  a  sum  equivalent  to  about  thirty-seven 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds  sterling.  Such  bills 
were  not  then  to  be  easily  procured  in  Paris  at  a  day's 
notice.  In  a  few  hours,  however,  the  purchase  was 
effected,  and  a  courier  started  for  London.^  As  soon 
as  Barillon  received  the  remittance,  he  flew  to  White- 
hall, and  communicated  the  welcome  news.  James 
was  not  ashamed  to  shed,  or  pretend  to  shed,  tears  of 
delight  and  gratitude.  "  Nobody  but  yom'  King,"  he 
said,  "  does  such  kind,  such  noble  things.  I  never  can 
be  grateful  enough.  Assure  him  that  my  attachment 
will  last  to  the  end  of  my  days."  Rochester,  Sunder- 
land, and  Godolphin  came,  one  after  another,  to  em- 
brace the  ambassador,  and  to  whisper  to  him  that  he 
had  given  new  life  to  their  royal  master.^ 

But  thouffh  James  and  his  three  advisers  were 
pleased  with  the  promptitude  which  Lewis  had  shown, 
they  were  by  no  means  satisfied  Avith  the  amount  of 
the  donation.  As  they  were  afraid,  however,  that 
they  might  give  offence  by  importunate  mendicancy, 
they  merely  hinted  their  wishes.  They  declared  that 
they  had  no  intention  of  haggling  with  so  generous  a 
benefactor  as  the   French  King,  and  that    they  were 

1  The  chief  authority  for  these  transactions  is  Barillon's  despatch  of 
Feb.  9  .  1G85.  It  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix  to  Mr.  Fox's  History 
Sp.e  also  Preston's  letter  to  James,  dated  April  i|.  1685,  in  Dalrymple. 

2  Lewis  to  Barillon,  Feb.  .1^.  1685. 
«  BariUon,  Feb.  i-|.  1G8&. 


1688.]  JAMES  THE    SECOND.  43 

willing  to  trust  entirely  to  his  munificence.  They,  at 
the  same  time,  attempted  to  propitiate  him  by  a  large 
sacrifice  of  national  honour.  It  was  well  known  that 
one  chief  end  of  his  politics  was  to  add  the  Belgian 
provinces  to  his  dominions.  England  was  bound  by  a 
treaty,  which  had  been  concluded  with  Spain  when 
Danby  was  Lord  Treasurer,  to  resist  any  attempt  which 
France  might  make  on  those  ]n-ovinces.  The  three 
ministers  informed  Barillon  that  their  master  considered 
that  treaty  as  no  longer  obligatory.  It  had  been  made, 
they  said,  by  Charles  :  it  might,  perhaps,  have  been 
bindino;  on  him  ;  but  his  brother  did  not  think  him- 
self  bound  by  it.  The  most  Christian  King  might, 
therefore,  without  any  fear  of  opposition  from  Eng- 
land, proceed  to  annex  Brabant  and  Hainault  to  his 
empire.^ 

It  was  at  the  same  time  resolved  that  an  extraoi-- 
dinary   embassy   should    be    sent    to    assure   chunhiii 
Lewis  of  the  gratitude  and  affection  of  James,   '^f/ao;'",^^'"'^" 
For  this  mission  was  selected  a  man  who  did   *'"'^"*'''- 
not  as  yet  occupy  a  very  eminent  j)osition,  but  whose 
renown,  strangely  made  up  of  infamy  and  glory,  filled 
at  a  later  period  the  whole  civilised  world. 

Soon  after  the  Restoration,  in  the  gay  and  dissolute 
times  wliicli  have  been  celebrated  by  the  lively 

/      His  history. 

pen  of  Hamilton,  James,  young  and  ardent  in 
the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  had  been  attracted  by  Arabella 
Churchill,  one  of  the  maids  of  honour  who  waited  on 
his  first  wife.  Tiie  younir  ladv  was  not  beautiful :  but 
the  taste  of  James  was  not  nice  :  and  she  became  his 
avowed  mistress.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  ])()or 
Cavalier  knight  who  haunted  Whitehall,  and  made 
himself  ridiculous  by  pul)lishing  a  dull  and  affected 
folio,  long  forgotten,  in  praise  of  monarchy  and  nion- 
1  Barillon,  Feb.  \\.  1685. 


44  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

arclis.  The  necessities  of  the  Churchills  were  press- 
ing ;  their  loyalty  was  ardent ;  and  their  only  feelino; 
about  Arabella's  seduction  seems  to  have  been  joyful 
surprise  that  so  homely  a  girl  should  have  attained  such 
high  preferment. 

Her  interest  was  indeed  of  great  use  to  her  rela- 
tions ;  but  none  of  them  was  so  fortunate  as  her  eldest 
brother  John,  a  fine  youth,  who  carried  a  pair  of  col- 
ours in  the  foot  guards.  He  rose  fast  in  the  court  and 
in  the  army,  and  was  early  distinguished  as  a  man  of 
fashion  and  of  pleasure.  His  stature  was  commanding, 
his  face  handsome,  his  address  singularly  winning,  yet 
of  such  dignity  that  the  most  impertinent  fops  never 
ventured  to  take  any  liberty  with  him  ;  his  temper, 
even  in  the  most  vexatious  and  irritating  circumstances, 
always  under  perfect  command.  His  education  had 
been  so  much  neglected,  that  he  could  not  spell  the 
most  common  words  of  his  own  language  :  but  his 
acute  and  vigorous  understanding  amply  supplied  the 
place  of  book  learning.  He  was  not  talkative :  but, 
when  he  was  forced  to  speak  in  public,  his  natural  elo- 
quence moved  the  envy  of  practised  rhetoricians. ^  His 
courage  was  singularly  cool  and  imperturbable.  During 
many  years  of  anxiety  and  peril,  he  never,  in  any 
emergency,  lost,  even  for  a  moment,  the  perfect  use  of 
his  admirable  judgment. 

In  his  twenty-third  year  he  was  sent  with  his  regi- 
ment to  join  the  French  forces,  the  i  engaged  in  oper- 
ations against  Holland.  His  serene  intrepidity  distin- 
guished him  among  thousands  of  brave  soldiers.  His 
professional  skill  commanded  the  respect  of  veteran 
officers.     He  was  pubhcly  thanked  at  the  head  of  the 

1  Swift  who  hated  Marlborough,  and  who  was  little  disposed  to  allow 
any  merit  to  those  whom  lie  hated,  suys,  in  the  iainous  letter  to  Crassus, 
"  You  are  no  ill  orator  in  the  Senate." 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  45 

army,  and  received  many  marks  of  esteem  and  confi- 
dence from  Turenne,  who  was  then  at  the  height  of 
tlie  niiUtary  glory. 

Unhappily  the  splendid  qualities  of  John  Churchill 
were  mingled  with  alloy  of  the  most  sordid  kind. 
Some  propensities,  which  in  youth  are  singularly  un- 
graceful, began  very  early  to  show  themselves  in  him. 
He  was  thrifty  in  his  very  vices,  and  levied  ample  con- 
tributions on  ladies  enriched  by  the  spoils  of  more  lib- 
eral lovers.  He  was,  during  a  short  time,  the  object 
of  the  violent  but  fickle  fondness  of  the  Duchess  of 
Cleveland.  On  one  occasion  he  was  caught  with  her 
by  the  King,  and  was  forced  to  leap  out  of  the  win- 
dow. She  rewarded  this  hazardous  feat  of  gallantry 
with  a  present  of  five  thousand  pounds.  With  this 
sum  the  prudent  young  hero  instantly  bought  an  an- 
nuity of  five  hundred  a  year,  well  secured  on  landed 
property.^  Already  his  private  drawer  contained  a 
hoard  of  broad  pieces  which,  fifty  years  later,  when  he 
was  a  Duke,  a  Prince  of  the  Empire,  and  the  richest 
subject  in  Europe,  remained  untouched.^ 

After  the  close  of  the  war  he  was  attached  to  the 
household  of  the  Duke  of  York,  accompanied  his  pa- 
tron to  the  Low  Countries  and  to  Edinburgh,  and  w-as 
rewarded  for  his  services  with  a  Scotch  peerage  and 
with  the  command  of  the  only  regiment  of  dragoons 
which  was  then  on  the  English  establishment.^     His 

1  Dartmouth's  note  on  Buraet,  i.  204.     Chesterfield's  Letters,  Nov.  18. 

1748.     Chesterliekl  is  an  unexceptionable  witness:  for  the  annuity  was  a 

charge  on  the  estate  of  his  grandfather,  Halifax.    I  believe  that  there  is  no 

foundation  for  a  disgraceful  addition  to  the  story  which  may  be  foun  1  in 

I'ope : 

"The  Rrtllant.  too,  to  wlioin  she  paid  it  Jo\m, 
liived  to  rufuso  his  mistress  liaifa  crown." 

Curll  calls  this  a  piece  of  travelling  scandal. 

^  Pope  in  Sppnc'c's  Anecdotes. 

•  See  the  Historical  Records  of  the  First  or  Royal  Dragoons     The 


46  HISTOEY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

wife  had  a  post  in  the  family  of  James's  younger 
daughter,  the  Princess  of  Denmark. 

Lord  Churchill  Avas  now  sent  as  ambassador  extraor- 
dinary to  Versailles.  He  had  it  in  charge  to  express 
the  warm  gratitude  of  the  English  government  for  the 
money  wliich  had  been  so  generously  bestowed.  It 
had  been  originally  intended  that  he  should,  at  the  same 
time,  ask  Lewis  for  a  much  larger  sum  ;  but,  on  full 
consideration,  it  was  apprehended  that  such  indelicate 
greediness  might  disgust  the  benefactor  whose  spon- 
taneous liberality  had  been  so  signally  displayed. 
Churchill  was  therefore  directed  to  confine  himself  to 
thanks  for  what  was  past,  and  to  say  nothing  about  the 
future.^ 

But  James  and  his  ministers,  even  while  protesting 
that  they  did  not  mean  to  be  importunate,  contrived  to 
hint,  very  intelligibly,  what  they  wished  and  expected. 
In  the  French  ambassador  they  had  a  dexterous,  a 
zealous,  and,  perhaps,  not  a  disinterested  intercessor. 
Lewis  made  some  difficulties,  probably  with  the  design 
of  enhancing  the  value  of  his  gifts.  In  a  very  few 
weeks,  however,  Barillon  received  from  Versailles  fif- 
teen hundred  thousand  livres  more.  This  sum,  equiv- 
alent to  about  a  hundred  and  twelve  thousand  pounds 
sterling,  he  was  instructed  to  dole  out  cautiously.  He 
was  authorised  to  furnish  the  Enfrlish  orovernment  with 
thirty  thousand  pounds,  for  the  purpose  of  corrupting 
members  of  the  new  House  of  Commons.     The  rest  he 

appointment  of  Churchill  to  the  command  of  this  regiment  was  ridiculed 
as  an  instance  of  absurd  partiality.  One  lampoon  of  that  time,  which  I 
do  not  remember  to  have  seen  in  print,  but  of  which  a  manuscript  copy  is 
in  the  British  Museum,  contains  these  lines: 

"  Let 's  cut  our  meat  with  spoons : 
The  sense  is  as  good 
As  that  Churchill  should 
Be  put  to  command  the  dragoonfl." 

1  BariUon,  Feb.  ^.  1685. 


1685. J  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  47 

was  directed  to  keep  in  reserve  for  some  extraordinaiy 
emergency,  such  as  a  dissolution  or  an  insurrection.^ 

The  turpitude  of  these  transactions  is  universally  ac- 
knowledged :  but  their  real  nature  seems  to  be  often 
misunderstood  ;  for,  though  the  foreign  policy  of  the 
two  last  Kings  of  the  House  of  Stuart  has  never,  since 
the  correspondence  of  Barillon  was  exposed  to  the  pub- 
lic eye,  found  an  apologist  among  us,  there  is  still  a 
party  which  labours  to  excuse  their  domestic  policy. 
Yet  it  is  certain  that  between  their  domestic  policy  and 
their  foreign  j)olicy  there  was  a  necessary  and  indis- 
soluble connexion.  If  they  had  upheld,  during  a  sin- 
gle year,  the  honour  of  the  country  abroad,  they 
would  have  been  compelled  to  change  the  whole  system 
of  their  administration  at  home.  To  praise  them  for 
refusing  to  govern  in  conformity  with  the  sense  of  Par- 
liament, and  yet  to  blame  them  for  submitting  to  the 
dictation  of  Lewis,  is  inconsistent.  For  they  had  only 
one  choice,  to  be  dependent  on  Lewis,  or  to  be  depend- 
ent on  Parliament. 

James,  to  do  him  justice,  would  gladly  have  found 
out  a  third  way  :  but  there  was  none.  He  became  the 
slave  of  France  :  but  it  would  be  incorrect  to  represent 
him  as  a  contented  slave.  He  had  spirit  enough  to  be 
at  times  angry  Avith  himself  for  submitting  to  such 
thraldom,  and  impatient  to  break  loose  from  it ;  and 
this  disposition  was  studiously  encouraged  by  the  agents 
of  many  foreign  powers. 

His  accession  had  excited  hopes  and  fears  in  every 
continental  court :    and  the   commencement  Fpenn^s  of 
of  his  administration  was  watched  by  stran-  nenfaT^T- 
gers   with    interest   scarcely  less   deep  than  towllrTi'* 
that  which  was  felt  by  his  own  subjects.     One  *^°siaud 

1  Barillon,  April    "J    •  Lewis  to  Barillon,  April  ^. 
VOL.  n.  4 


48  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  fCn.  FV. 

government  alone  wished  that  the  troubles  wliich  had, 
during  three  generations,  distracted  England,  might 
be  eternal.  All  other  governments,  whether  republi- 
can or  monarchical,  whether  Protestant  or  Roman 
Catholic,  wislied  to  see  those  troubles  happily  termi- 
nated. 

The  nature  of  the  long  contest  between  the  Stuarts 
and  their  Parliaments  was  indeed  very  imperfectly  ap- 
prehended by  foreign  statesmen :  but  no  statesman 
could  fail  to  perceive  the  effect  which  that  contest  had 
produced  on  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe.  In  or- 
dinary circumstances,  the  sympathies  of  the  courts  of 
Vienna  and  Madrid  would  doubtless  have  been  with  a 
prince  struggling  against  subjects,  and  especially  with 
a  Roman  Catholic  prince  struggling  against  heretical 
subjects :  but  all  such  sympathies  were  now  overpowered 
by  a  stronger  feeling.  The  fear  and  hatred  inspired 
by  the  greatness,  the  injustice,  and  the  arrogance  of 
the  French  King  were  at  the  height.  His  neighbours 
might  well  doubt  whether  it  were  more  dangerous  to 
be  at  war  or  at  peace  with  him.  For  in  peace  he  con- 
tinued to  plunder  and  to  outrage  them  ;  and  they  had 
tried  the  chances  of  war  against  him  in  vain.  In  this 
perplexity  they  looked  with  intense  anxiety  towards 
England.  Would  she  act  on  the  principles  of  the 
Trii)le  Alliance  or  on  the  principles  of  the  treaty  of 
Dover?  On  that  issue  depended  the  fate  of  all  her 
neighbours.  With  her  help  Lewis  might  yet  be  with- 
stood :  but  no  help  could  be  expected  from  her  till  she 
was  at  unity  with  herself.  Before  the  strife  between 
the  throne  and  the  Parliament  began,  she  had  been  a 
power  of  the  first  rank :  on  the  day  on  which  that 
strife  terminated  she  became  a  power  of  the  first  rank 
again  ;   but   while    the    dispute    remained   undecided, 


1685.J  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  49 

slie  was  condemned  to  inaction  and  to  vassalage.  She 
had  been  great  under  the  Plantagenets  and  Tudors : 
slie  was  again  great  under  the  princes  who  reigned 
after  the  Revolution  :  but,  under  the  Kings  of  the 
House  of  Stuart,  she  was  a  blank  in  the  map  of  Eu- 
rope. She  had  lost  one  class  of  energies,  and  had  not 
yet  acquired  another.  That  species  of  force,  which, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  had  enabled  her  to  humble 
France  and  Spain,  had  ceased  to  exist.  That  species 
of  force,  whicli,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  humbled 
France  and  Spain  once  more,  had  not  yet  been  called 
into  action.  The  government  was  no  longer  a  limited 
monarchy  after  the  fashion  of  the  middle  ages.  It  had 
not  yet  become  a  limited  monarchy  after  the  modern 
fashion.  With  the  vices  of  two  different  systems  it 
had  the  strength  of  neither.  The  elements  of  our 
polity,  instead  of  combining  in  harmony,  counteracted 
and  neutralised  each  other.  All  was  transition,  con- 
flict, and  disorder.  The  chief  business  of  the  sover- 
eign was  to  infringe  the  privileges  of  the  legislature. 
The  chief  business  of  the  legislatiu-e  was  to  encroach 
on  the  prerogatives  of  the  sovereign.  The  King  read- 
ily accepted  foreign  aid,  which  relieved  him  from  the 
misery  of  being  dependent  on  a  mutinous  Parliament. 
The  Parliament  refused  to  tiie  King  the  means  of  sup- 
])orting  the  national  honour  abroad,  from  an  apprehen- 
sion, too  well  founded,  that  those  means  might  be  em- 
uloyed  in  order  to  establish  despotism  at  home.  The 
effect  of  these  jealousies  was  that  our  country,  with 
all  her  vast  resources,  was  of  as  little  weight  in  Chris- 
tendom as  the  duchy  of  Savoy  or  the  duchy  of  Loraine, 
and  certainly  of  far  less  weight  than  the  small  province 
of  H(;lland. 

France  was  deej)ly  interested  in  prolonging  this  state 


50  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

of  things. 1  All  other  powers  were  deeply  interested 
in  bi'inging  it  to  a  close.  The  general  wish  of  Europe 
was  that  James  would  govern  in  conformity  with  law 
and  with  public  opinion.  From  the  Escurial  itself 
came  letters,  expressing  an  earnest  hope  that  the  new 
Policy  of  the  King  of  England  would  be  on  good  terms 
Borne.  with  his  Parliament  and  his  people.^     Fi'om 

the  Vatican  itself  came  cautions  against  immoderate 
zeal  for  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.  Benedict  Odes- 
calchi,  who  filled  the  papal  chair  under  the  name  of 
Innocent  the  Eleventh,  felt,  in  his  character  of  tempo- 
ral sovereign,  all  those  apprehensions  with  which  other 
princes  watched  the  progress  of  the  French  power. 
He  had  also  grounds  of  uneasiness  which  were  pecu- 
liar to  himself.  It  was  a  happy  circumstance  for  the 
Protestant  religion  that,  at  the  moment  when  the  last 
Roman  Catliolic  King  of  England  mounted  the  throne, 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  was  torn  by  dissension, 

1  I  miglit  transcribe  half  Barillon's  correspondence  in  proof  of  this  propo- 
sition: but  I  will  only  quote  one  passage,  in  which  the  policy  of  the  French 
government  towards  England  is  exhibited  concisely  and  with  perfect 
clearness. 

"  On  peut  tenir  pour  un  maxime  indubitable  que  I'accord  du  Roy 
d'Angleten'e  avec  sou  parlement,  en  quelque  maniere  qu'il  se  fasse,  n'est 
pas  confomie  aux  int^rets  de  V.  M.  Je  me  contente  de  penser  cela  sans 
m'en  ouvrir  a  personne,  et  je  cache  avec  soin  mes  sentimens  a  cet  egard." 

Veil    -^S 

—  Barillon  to  Lewis,  - — tt^  1687.     That  this  was  the  real  secret  of  the 

'  iVIar.  10. 

■whole  policy  of  Lewis  towards  our  country  was  perfectly  understood  at 

Vienna.   The  Emperor  Leopold  wrote  thus  to  James,  1680.    "  Galli 

id  unum  agebant,  ut,  perpetuas  inter  Serenitatem  vestram  et  ejusdem  pop- 
ulos  fovendo  simultates,  reliquaj  ChristiansB  Europce  tanto  securius  insulta- 
rent." 

2  "  Que  sea  unido  con  su  reyno,  y  en  todo  buena  intelligencia  con  el 
parlamento."  —  Despatch  from  the  King  of  Spain  to  Don  Pedro  Ronquillo, 
March  X^.  1685.  This  despatch  is  in  the  archives  of  Simancas,  which 
contain  a  great  mass  of  papers  relating  to  English  affairs.  Copies  of  the 
most  interesting  of  those  papers  are  in  the  possession  of  M.  Guizot,  and 
were  by  him  lent  to  me.  It  is  with  peculiar  pleasure  that,  at  this  time,  1 
•cknowledge  this  mark  of  the  friendship  of  so  great  a  man.    (1848.) 


I 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  51 

and  threatened  with  a  new  schism.  A  quarrel  similar 
to  that  which  had  raged  in  the  eleventh  century  be- 
tween  the  Emperors  and  the  Supreme  Pontiffs  had 
arisen  between  Lewis  and  Innocent.  Lewis,  zealous 
even  to  bigotry  for  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  but  tenacious  of  his  regal  authority,  accused  the 
Pope  of  encroaching  on  the  secular  rights  of  the  French 
crown,  and  was  in  turn  accused  by  the  Pope  of  en- 
croaching on  the  spiritual  power  of  the  keys.  The 
King,  haughty  as  he  was,  encountered  a  spirit  even 
more  determined  than  his  OAvn.  Innocent  was,  in  all 
private  relations,  the  meekest  and  gentlest  of  men  : 
but,  when  he  spoke  officially  from  the  chair  of  St. 
Peter,  he  spoke  in  the  tones  of  Gregory  the  Seventh 
and  of  Sixtus  the  Fifth.  The  dispute  became  serious. 
Afirents  of  the  Kino;  Avere  excommunicated.  Adher- 
ents  of  the  Pope  were  banished.  The  King  made  the 
champions  of  his  authority  Bishops.  The  Pope  re- 
fused them  institution.  They  took  possession  of  the 
episcopal  palaces  and  revenues  ;  but  they  were  inconfi- 
petent  to  perform  the  episcopal  functions.  Before  the 
struggle  terminated,  there  were  in  France  thirty  prel- 
ates who  could  not  confirm  or  ordain.^ 

Had  any  prince  then  living,  except  Lewis,  been  en- 
gaged in  such  a  dispute  with  the  Vatican,  he  would 
have  had  all  Protestant  governments  on  his  side.  But 
tlie  fear  and  resentment  which  the  ambition  and  inso- 
lence of  tlie  French  King  had  inspired  were  such  that 
whoever  had  the  courage  manfully  to  oppose  him  was 
sure  of  public  sympathy.  Even  Lutherans  and  Cal- 
vinists,  who  had  always  detested  the  Pope,  could  not 

'  Few  English  readers  will  be  desirous  to  go  deep  into  the  history  of  this 
quarrel.  Suininaries  will  be  found  in  Cardinal  Bausset's  Life  of  Bosauet, 
and  in  Voltaire's  Age  of  Lewis  XIV. 


62  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

refi'ain  from  wisliing  him  success  against  a  tyrant  who 
aimed  at  universal  monarchy.  It  was  thus  that,  in  the 
present  century,  many  who  regarded  Pius  the  Seventh 
as  Antichrist  were  well  pleased  to  see  Antichrist  con- 
fi'ont  the  gigantic  power  of  Napoleon. 

The  resentment  which  Innocent  felt  towards  J^rance 
disposed  him  to  take  a  mild  and  liberal  view  of  the 
affairs  of  England.  The  return  of  the  English  people 
to  the  fold  of  which  he  was  the  shepherd  would  un- 
doubtedly have  rejoiced  his  soul.  But  he  was  too  wise 
a  man  to  believe  that  a  nation,  so  bold  and  stubborn, 
could  be  brought  back  to  the  Church  of  Rome  by  the 
violent  and  unconstitutional  exercise  of  royal  author- 
ity. It  was  not  difficult  to  foresee  that,  if  James  at- 
tempted to  promote  the  interests  of  his  religion  by  ille- 
gal and  unpopular  means,  the  attempt  would  fail ;  the 
hatred  with  which  the  heretical  islanders  reo;arded  the 
true  faith  would  become  fiercer  and  stronger  than  ever ; 
and  an  indissoluble  association  would  be  created  in 
their  minds  between  Protestantism  and  civil  freedom, 
between  Popery  and  arbitrary  power.  In  the  mean- 
time the  King  would  be  an  object  of  aversion  and  sus- 
picion to  his  people.  England  would  still  be,  as  she 
had  been  under  James  the  First,  under  Charles  the 
First,  and  under  Charles  the  Second,  a  power  of  the 
third  rank  ;  and  France  would  domineer  unchecked 
beyond  the  Alps  and  the  Rhine.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  was  probable  that  James,  by  acting  with  prudence 
and  moderation,  by  strictly  observing  the  laws,  and  by 
exertino;  himself  to  win  the  confidence  of  his  Parlia- 
ment,  might  be  able  to  obtain,  for  the  professors  of  his 
religion,  a  large  measure  of  rcHef.  Penal  statutes 
would  go  first.  Statutes  imposing  civil  incapacities 
would  soon  follow.     In  the  meantime,  the  English  King 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  53 

and  the  English  nation  united  might  head  the  Euro- 
pean coahtion,  and  might  oppose  an  insuperable  bar- 
rier to  the  cupidity  of  Lewis. 

Innocent  was  confirmed  in  his  judgment  by  the 
principal  Englishmen  who  resided  at  his  court.  Of 
these  the  most  illustrious  was  Philip  Howard,  sprung 
from  the  noblest  houses  of  Britain,  grandson,  on  one 
side,  of  an  Earl  of  Arundel,  on  the  other,  of  a  Duke 
of  Lennox.  Philip  had  long  been  a  member  of  the 
sacred  college :  he  was  commonly  designated  as  the 
Cardinal  of  England  ;  and  he  was  the  chief  counsellor 
of  the  Holy  See  in  matters  relating  to  his  country. 
He  had  been  driven  into  exile  by  the  outcry  of  Prot- 
estant bigots  ;  and  a  member  of  his  family,  the  unfoi'- 
tunate  Stafford,  had  fallen  a  victim  to  their  rage.  But 
neither  the  Cardinal's  own  wrongs,  nor  those  of  his 
house,  had  so  heated  his  mind  as  to  make  him  a  rash 
adviser.  Every  letter,  therefore,  which  went  from  the 
Vatican  to  Whitehall  recommended  patience,  moder- 
ation, and  respect  for  the  prejudices  of  the  English 
people.^ 

In  the  mind  of  James  there  was  a  great  conflict. 
We  should  do  him  iniustice  if  we  supposed  struggle  in 

-^  ^  *  the  mind  of 

that  a  state  of  vassalage  was  agreeable  to  ins  James, 
temper.  He  loved  authority  and  business.  He  had 
a  high  sense  of  his  own  personal  dignity.  Nay,  he  was 
not  altofrether  destitute  of  a  sentiment  which  bore  some 
affinity  to  j)at)-iotisrn.  It  galled  his  soul  to  think  that 
the  kingdom  which  he  ruled  was  of  far  less  account  in 
the  world  than  many  states  which  ])ossessed  smaller 
natural  advantages ;  and  he  listened  eagerly  to  foreign 
ministers  when  they  urged  him  to  assert  the  dignity  of 

1  Burnet,  i.  661.,  and  Letter  from  Rome;  Dodd's  Church  History,  part 
viii.  book  i.  art.  1. 


54  HISTORY  OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

his  rank,  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  a  ^reat  con- 
federacy, to  become  the  protector  of  injured  nations, 
and  to  tame  the  pride  of  that  power  which  held  the 
Continent  in  awe.  Such  exhortations  made  his  heart 
swell  with  emotions  unknown  to  his  careless  and  effem- 
inate brother.  But  those  emotions  were  soon  subdued 
by  a  stronger  feeling.  A  vigorous  foreign  policy  neces- 
sarily implied  a  conciliatory  domestic  policy.  It  was 
impossible  at  once  to  confront  the  might  of  France  and 
to  trample  on  the  liberties  of  England.  The  executive 
government  could  undertake  nothing  great  without  the 
support  of  the  Commons,  and  could  obtain  their  sup- 
port only  by  acting  in  conformity  with  their  opinion. 
Fluctuations  Thus  James  found  that  the  two  things  which 
ofhispoucy.  |jg  j^Qg^  desired  could  not  be  possessed  to- 
gether. His  second  wish  was  to  be  feared  and  respected 
abroad.  But  his  first  wish  was  to  be  absolute  master 
at  home.  Between  the  incompatible  objects  on  which 
his  heart  was  set,  he,  for  a  time,  went  irresolutely  to  and 
fi*o.  The  conflict  in  his  own  breast  gave  to  his  public 
acts  a  strange  appearance  of  indecision  and  insincerity. 
Those  who,  without  the  clue,  attempted  to  explore  the 
maze  of  his  politics  were  imable  to  understand  how 
the  same  man  could  be,  in  the  same  week,  so  haughty 
and  so  mean.  Even  Lewis  was  perplexed  by  the  va- 
garies of  an  ally  who  passed,  in  a  few  hours,  from  hom- 
age to  defiance,  and  from  defiance  to  homage.  Yet, 
now  that  the  whole  conduct  of  James  is  before  us,  this 
inconsistency  seems  to  admit  of  a  simple  explanation. 
At  the  moment  of  his  accession  he  was  in  doubt 
whether  the  kingdom  would  peaceably  submit  to  his 
authority.  The  Exclusionists,  lately  so  powerful, 
might  rise  in  arms  against  him.  He  might  be  in  gi'eat 
need  of  French  money  and  French  troops.     He  was 


I 


1685.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  55 

therefore,  during  some  clays,  content  to  be  a  sycophant 
and  a  mendicant.  He  humbly  apologized  for  daring  to 
call  his  Pai'lianient  too-ether  without  the  consent  of  tlie 
French  Government.  He  beo;cTed  hard  for  a  Frencli 
subsidy.  He  wept  with  joy  over  the  French  bills  of 
exchange.  He  sent  to  Versailles  a  special  embassy 
charged  with  assurances  of  his  gratitude,  attachment, 
and  submission.  But  scarcely  had  the  embassy  de- 
parted when  his  feelings  underwent  a  change.  He 
had  been  everywhere  proclaimed  without  one  riot, 
without  one  seditious  outcry.  From  all  corners  of  the 
island  he  received  intelligence  that  his  subjects  were 
tranquil  and  obedient.  His  spirit  rose.  The  degrad- 
ing relation  in  which  he  stood  to  a  foreign  power 
seemed  intolerable.  He  became  proud,  punctilious, 
boastful,  quarrelsome.  He  held  such  high  language 
about  the  dignity  of  his  crown  and  the  balance  of 
poAver  that  his  whole  court  fully  expected  a  complete 
revolution  in  the  foreign  politics  of  the  realm.  Ho 
commanded  Churchill  to  send  home  a  minute  report  of 
the  ceremonial  of  Versailles,  in  order  that  the  honours 
with  which  the  English  embassy  was  received  there 
might  be  repaid,  and  not  more  than  repaid,  to  the  rep- 
resentative of  France  at  Whitehall.  The  news  of  this 
change  was  received  with  delight  at  Madrid,  Vienna, 
and  the  Hague. ^  Lewis  was  at  first  merely  diverted. 
"  My  good  ally  talks  big,"  he  said  ;  "  but  he  is  as  fond 
of  my  pistoles  as  ever  his  brother  was."  Soon,  how- 
ever, the  altered  demeanour  of  James,  and  the  hopes 
with  which  that  demeanour  ins])ired  both  the  branches 
of  the  House  of  Austria,  hegan  to  call  for  more  serious 
notice.     A  remarkable  letter  is  still  extant,  in  which 

^  Consultations  of  the  Spanish  Council  of  State  on  April  J^.  and  April 
^.  1685,  in  the  Archives  of  Simancas. 


5()  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

the  French  King  intimated  a  strong  suspicion  that  he 
had  been  duped,  and  that  the  very  money  which  he 
had  sent  to  Westminster  would  be  employed  against 
him.i 

B}'"  this  time  England  had  recovered  from  the  sad- 
ness and  anxiety  caused  by  the  death  of  the  good- 
natured  Charles.  The  Tories  were  loud  in  professions 
of  attachment  to  their  new  master.  The  hatred  of  the 
Whigs  was  kept  down  by  fear.  That  great  mass  which 
is  not  steadily  Wliig  or  Tory,  but  which  inclines  alter- 
nately to  Whiggism  and  to  Toryism,  was  still  on  the 
Tory  side.  The  reaction  which  had  followed  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Oxford  parliament  had  not  yet  spent  its 
force. 

The  King  early  put  the  loyalty  of  his  Protestant 
Public  ceie-  fn^nds  to  the  proof.  While  he  was  a  subject, 
the'itoman  ^^^  ^^^^  been  in  the  habit  of  hearing  mass  with 
ritesin'the  closcd  doors  in  a  small  oratory  which  had 
palace.  been  fitted  up  for  his  wife.     He  now  ordered 

the  doors  to  be  thrown  open,  in  order  that  all  who 
came  to  pay  their  duty  to  him  might  see  the  ceremony. 
When  the  host  was  elevated  there  was  a  strange  con- 
fusion in  the  antechamber.  The  Roman  Catholics  fell 
on  their  knees :  the  Protestants  hurried  out  of  the 
room.  Soon  a  new  pulpit  was  erected  in  the  palace ; 
and,  during  Lent,  a  series  of  sermons  was  preached 
there  by  Popish  divines,  to  the  great  discomposure  of 
zealous  churchmen.^ 

A  more  serious  innovation  followed.  Passion  week 
came  ;  and  the  King  determined  to  hear  mass  with  the 
same  pomp  with  which  his  predecessors  had  been  sur- 

1  Lewis  to  Barillon,  -f—fr  1G85 ;  Burnet,  i.  623. 

2  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  5.;  Barillon,  jyj^^p-x  1685.    Eve- 
lyn's Diary,  March  5.  168|. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  57 

rounded  when  they  repaired  to  the  temples  of  the  es- 
tabhshed  religion.  He  announced  his  intention  to  the 
three  members  of  the  interior  cabinet,  and  requested 
them  to  attend  him.  Sunderland,  to  whom  all  religions 
were  the  same,  readily  consented.  Godolphin,  as 
Chamberlain  of  the  Queen,  had  already  been  in  the 
habit  of  giving  her  his  hand  when  she  repaired  to  her 
oratory,  and  felt  no  scruple  about  bowing  himself  offi- 
cially in  the  house  of  Rimmon.  But  Rochester  was 
greatly  disturbed.  His  influence  in  the  country  arose 
chiefly  from  the  opinion  entertained  by  the  clergy  and 
by  the  Tory  gentry,  that  he  was  a  zealous  and  uncom- 
promising friend  of  the  Church.  His  orthodoxy  had 
been  considered  as  fully  atoning  for  faults  which  would 
otherwise  have  made  him  the  most  unpopular  man  in 
the  kingdom,  for  boundless  arrogance,  for  extreme  vio- 
lence of  temper,  and  for  manners  almost  brutal.^  He 
feared  that,  by  complying  with  the  royal  wishes,  he 
should  greatly  lower  himself  in  the  estimation  of  his 
party.  Aft(!r  some  altercation  he  obtained  permission 
to  pass  the  holidays  out  of  town.  All  the  other  great 
civil  dignitaries  were  ordered  to  be  at  their  posts  on 
Easter  Sunday.  The  rites  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
were  once  more,  after  an  interval  of  a  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  years,  performed  at  Westminster  with 
regal  splendour.  The  Guards  were  drawn  out.  The 
Knights  of  the  Garter  wore  their  coHars.  Tiie  Duke  of 
Somerset,  second  in  raid-c  among  the  temporal  nobles 
of  the  realm,  carried  the  sword  of  state.  A  long  train 
of  great  lords  accompanied  the  King  to  his  seat.  But 
it  was  remarked  that  Ormond  and  Halifax  remained  in 


1  "  To  those  tliat  ask  boons 
lie  swcnrs  by  (lod's  nous, 
And  chides  theui  as  if  tboy  came  tlierc  to  steal  spoons.'' 

Lameutable  Lory,  a  ballad,  16  <4. 


58  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Crt.  TV. 

the  antechamber.  A  few  years  before  they  had  gal- 
lantly defended  the  cause  of  James  against  some  of 
those  who  now  pressed  past  them.  Ormond  had  borne 
no  share  in  the  slaughter  of  Roman  Catholics.  Halifax 
had  courageously  pronounced  Stafford  not  guilty.  As 
the  timeservers  who  had  pretended  to  shudder  at  the 
thought  of  a  Popish  king,  and  who  had  shed  without 
pity  the  innocent  blood  of  a  Popish  peer,  now  elbowed 
each  other  to  get  near  a  Popish  altar,  the  accomplished 
Trimmer  might,  with  some  justice,  indulge  his  solitary 
pride  in  that  unpopular  nickname.^ 

Within  a  week  after  this  ceremony  James  made  a 
His  corona-  ^^^  greater  sacrifice  of  his  own  religious  prej- 
tion.  udices  than  he  had  yet  called  on  any  of  his 

Protestant  subjects  to  make.  He  was  crowned  on  the 
twenty-third  of  April,  the  feast  of  the  patron  saint  of 
the  realm.  The  Abbey  and  the  Hall  were  splendidly 
decorated.  The  presence  of  the  Queen  and  of  the 
peei'esses  gave  to  the  solemnity  a  charm  wdiich  had 
been  wantino-  to  the.  magnificent  inauguration  of  tlie 
late  Kinp-.  Yet  those  who  remembered  that  inaucrura- 
tion  ])ronounced  that  there  was  a  great  falling  off. 
The  ancient  usage  was  that,  before  a  coronation,  the 
sovereign,  with  all  his  heralds,  judges,  councillors,  lords, 
and  gi-eat  dignitaries,  should  ride  in  state  from  the 
Tower  to  Westminster.  Of  these  cavalcades  the  last 
and  the  most  glorious  was  that  which  passed  through  i 
the  capital  while  the  feelings  excited  by  the  Restora- 
tion were  still  in  fiill  vigour.  Arches  of  triumph  over- 
liung  the  road.  All  Cornhill,  Cheapside,  Saint  Paul's 
Church  Yard,  Fleet  Street,  and  the  Strand,  were 
lined  with  scaffolding.  The  whole  city  had  thus  been 
admitted  to  gaze  on  royalty  in  the  most  splendid  and 
1  Barillon.Apnl. 1 0.1685. 


1685.]  JAMES  THE    SECOND.  69 

solemn  form  that  royalty  could  wear.  James  ordered 
an  estimate  to  be  made  of  tlie  cost  of  such  a  procession, 
and  found  that  it  would  amount  to  about  half  as  much 
as  he  proposed  to  expend  in  covering  his  wife  with 
tnnkets.  He  accordingly  determined  to  be  profuse 
where  he  ought  to  have  been  frugal,  and  niggardly 
where  he  might  pardonably  have  been  profuse.  More 
than  an  hundred  thousand  pounds  were  laid  out  in 
dressing  the  Queen,  and  the  procession  from  the  Tower 
was  omitted.  The  folly  of  this  course  is  obvious.  If 
pageantry  be  of  any  use  in  politics,  it  is  of  use  as  a 
means  of  strikino;  the  imao;ination  of  the  multitude. 
It  is  surely  the  height  of  absurdity  to  shut  out  the 
populace  from  a  show  of  which  the  main  object  is  to 
make  an  impression  on  the  populace.  James  would 
have  shown  a  more  judicious  munificence  and  a  more 
judicious  parsimony,  if  he  had  traversed  Lond(m  from 
east  to  west  with  the  accustomed  pomp,  and  had  or- 
dered the  robes  of  his  wife  to  be  somewhat  less  thickly 
set  with  pearls  and  diamonds.  His  example  was,  how- 
ever, long  followed  by  his  successors  ;  and  sums  which, 
well  employed,  would  have  afforded  exquisite  gratifi- 
cation to  a  large  part  of  the  nation,  were  squandered 
on  an  exhibition  to  which  only  three  or  four  thousand 
privileged  persons  were  admitted.  At  length  the  old 
practice  was  partially  revived.  On  the  day  of  the 
coronation  of  Queen  Victoria  there  was  a  procession 
in  which  many  deficiencies  might  be  noted,  but  which 
was  seen  with  interest  and  delight  by  half  a  million  of 
her  subjects,  and  which  undoubtedly  gave  far  greater 
pleasure,  and  called  forth  far  greater  enthusiasm,  than 
the  more  costly  dis])lay  which  was  witnessed  by  a 
select  circle  within  the  Abbey. 

James  had  ordered  Sancroft  to  abridac   the  ritual. 


60  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

The  reason  publicly  assigned  was  that  the  day  was  too 
short  for  all  that  was  to  be  done.  But  whoever  ex- 
amines the  changes  which  were  made  will  see  that  the 
real  object  was  to  remove  some  things  highly  offensive 
to  the  religious  feelings  of  a  zealous  Roman  Catholic. 
The  Communion  Service  was  not  read.  The  ceremony 
of  presenting  the  sovereign  with  a  richly  bound  copy  of 
the  English  Bible,  and  of  exhorting  him  to  prize  above 
all  earthly  treasures  a  volume  which  he  had  been 
taught  to  regard  as  adulterated  with  false  doctrine,  was 
omitted.  What  remained,  however,  after  all  this  cur- 
tailment, might  well  have  raised  scruples  in  the  mind 
of  a  man  who  sincerely  believed  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land to  be  a  heretical  society,  within  the  pale  of  which 
salvation  was  not  to  be  found.  The  King  made  an 
oblation  on  the  altar.  He  appeared  to  join  in  the  peti- 
tions of  the  Litany  which  Avas  chaunted  by  the  Bishops. 
He  received  fi'om  those  false  prophets  the  unction  typ- 
ical of  a  divine  influence,  and  knelt  with  the  semblance 
of  devotion  while  they  called  down  upon  him  that 
Holy  Spirit  of  which  they  were,  in  his  estimation,  the 
malignant  and  obdurate  foes.  Such  are  the  inconsist- 
encies of  human  nature  that  this  man,  who,  from  a 
fanatical  zeal  for  his  religion,  threw  away  three  king- 
doms, vet  chose  to  commit  what  was  little  short  of  an 
act  of  apostasy,  rather  than  forego  the  childish  pleasure 
of  being  invested  with  the  gewgaws  symbolical  of 
kingly  power.^ 

Francis  Turner,  Bishop  of  Ely,  preached.  He  was 
one  of  those  wn-iters  who  still  affected  the  obsolete  style 
of  Archbishop  Williams  and  Bishop  Andrews.      The 

1  From  Adda's  despatch  of  p^^—f-  1686,  and  fi-om  the  expressions  of  the 
Pfere  d'Orleans  (Histoire  des  Revolutions  d'Angleterre,  liv.  xi.),  it  is  clear 
that  rigid  Catholics  thought  the  King's  conduct  indefensible. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  61 

sermon  was  made  up  of  quaint  conceits,  such  as  seventy 
years  earlier  might  have  been  admired,  but  sucJi  as 
moved  tlie  scorn  of  a  generation  accustomed  to  the 
purer  eloquence  of  Sprat,  of  South,  and  of  Tillotson. 
King  Solomon  was  King  James.  Adonijah  was  Mon- 
mouth. Joab  was  a  Rye  House  conspirator ;  Shimei, 
a  Whig  libeller ;  Abiatiiar,  an  honest  but  misguided 
old  Cavalier.  One  phrase  in  the  Book  of  Chronicles 
was  construed  to  mean  that  the  King  was  above  the 
Parliament :  and  another  was  cited  to  prove  that  he 
alone  ouo;ht  to  command  the  militia.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  discourse  the  orator  very  timidly  alluded 
to  the  new  and  embarrassing  position  in  which  the 
Church  stood  with  reference  to  the  sovereign,  and  re- 
minded his  hearers  that  the  Emperor  Constantius  Chlo- 
rus,  though  not  himself  a  Christian,  had  held  in  honour 
those  Christians  who  remained  true  to  their  religion, 
and  had  treated  with  scorn  those  who  sought  to  earn 
his  favour  by  a})ostasy.  The  service  in  the  Abbey  was 
followed  by  a  stately  banquet  in  the  Hall,  the  banquet 
by  brilliant  fireworks,  and  the  fireworks  by  much  bad 
j)oetry.^ 

This  may  be  fixed  upon  as  the  moment  at  which 
the    enthusiasm  of  the  Torv  i)artv  reached  Knthusiism 

.  ,       '      '  ",  „     ,  of  the  Tories' 

the  zenith,     xiiver  smce  the  accession  of  the  addresses. 
new  King,  addresses  had  been  pouring  in  which  ex- 

'  London  Gazette;  Gazette  de  France;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the 
Secon<l,  ji.  10.;  History  of  the  Coronation  of  Kinj;  James  the  Second  aiiil 
Queen  i\Iar\%  by  Francis  Saiidford,  Lancaster  Herald,  Fol.  1687;  Evelyn's 
Diary,  May  21.  IfiSS;  Despatch  of  the  Dutch  Aiuhassadors,  April  10.  108.5; 
Burnet,  i.  628.;  Eachard,  iii.  1-M.;  A  Sermon  preached  before  their  Majes- 
ties King  .lames  the  Second  and  (Jneen  Mary  at  their  Coronation  in  West- 
m  !!5ter  Abbey,  April  -2'1  lOS."),  by  Francis,  Lord  Bishop  of  Ely,  and  Lord 
Almoner.  I  have  seen  an  Italian  account  which  was  published  at  Modena, 
Bnd  which  is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  skill  with  which  the  \NTiter  sinks 
the  fact  that  the  pniyer.s  and  psalms  were  in  Englisli,  and  that  the  Bishops 
were  heretics. 


62  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

pressed  profound  veneration  for  his  person  and  office, 
and  bitter  detestation  of  the  vanquished  Whigs.     Tlie 
maoistrates  of  Middlesex  thanked  God  for  having;  con- 
founded  the  designs  of  those  regicides  and  exchiders 
who,   not  content  with  having  murdered  one   blessed 
nionarcli,  were  bent  on  destroying  the  foundations  of 
monarchy.       The    city    of    Gloucester   execrated    the 
bh^odthirsty    villains    who    had    tried    to    deprive    His 
Majesty  of  his  just    inheritance.     The    burgesses   of 
Wigan  assured  their  sovei^eign  that  they  would  defend 
iiim    against   all   plotting   Achitophels   and   rebellious 
Absaloms.     The  grand   jury  of   Suffolk  expressed   a 
hope  that  the  Parliament  would  proscribe  all  the  ex- 
clusionists.       Many    corporations   pledged   themselves 
never  to  return  to  the  House  of  Commons  any  person 
who  had  voted  for  taking  away  the  birthright  of  James. 
Even    the   capital    was   profoundly    obsequious.     The 
lawyers  and  traders  vied  with  each  other  in  servility. 
Inns  of  Court  and  Inns  of  Chancery  sent  up  fervent 
professions    of  attachment    and    submission.     All    the 
great  commercial  societies,  the  East  India  Company, 
the    African    Company,    the    Turkey    Company,    the 
Muscovy  Company,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  the 
Maryland  Merchants,  the  Jamaica  Merchants,  the  Mer- 
chant Adventurers,  declared  that  they  most  cheerfully 
complied  with  the  royal  edict  which  required  them  still 
to  pay  custom.     Bristol,  the  second  city  of  the  island, 
echoed  the  voice  of  London.     But  nowhere  was  the 
spirit  of  loyalty  stronger  than  In  the  two  Universities. 
Oxiford  declared    that   she  w^ould  never  swerve  from 
those  religious  principles  which  bound  her  to  obey  the 
King  without  any  restrictions  or  limitations.   Cambridge 
condemned,  in  severe  terms,  the  violence  and  treachery 
of  those  turbulent  men  who  had  maliciously  endeavoured 


« 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  63 

to  turn  the   stream  of  succession  out  of  tlie  ancient 
cliannel.^ 

'  Such  addresses  as  these  filled,  during  a  considerable 
time,  every  number  of  the  London  Gazette. 

.,-,  .  1        1  1  1  ■  1  1        'riie  electioiM. 

But  it  was  not  only  by  addressing  tliat  the 
Tories  showed  their  zeal.  The  writs  for  the  new 
Parliament  had  gone  forth,  and  the  country  was  agi- 
tated by  the  tumult  of  a  general  election.  No  election 
Ijad  ever  taken  place  under  circumstances  so  favour- 
able to  the  court.  Hundreds  of  thousands  whom  the 
Popish  plot  had  scai'ed  into  Whiggism  had  been  scared 
back  by  the  Rye  House  plot  into  Toryism.  In  the 
counties  the  government  coidd  depend  on  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  the  gentlemen  of  three  hundred 
a  year  and  upwards,  and  on  the  clergy  almost  to  a 
man.  Those  borouo;hs  which  had  once  been  the  ciiii- 
iels  of  Whiggism  had  recently  been  deprived  of  their 
charters  by  legal  sentence,  or  had  prevented  the  sen- 
tence by  voluntary  surrender.  They  had  now  been 
reconstituted  in  such  ;i  manner  that  they  were  certain 
to  return  members  devoted  to  the  crown.  Where  the 
townsmen  could  not  be  trusted,  the  freedom  had  been 
bestowed  on  the  neighbouring  squires.  In  some  of 
the  small  western  corporations,  the  constituent  bodies 
were  in  great  part  composed  of  Captains  and  Lieu- 
tenants of  the  Guards.  The  returnino-  officers  were 
ahnost  everywhere  in  the  interest  of  the  court.  In  ev- 
ery shire  the  Lord  I^ieutenant  and  his  deputies  formed 
a  powerful,  active,  and  vigilant  committee,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  cajoling  and  intimidating  the  freeholders.  Tiie 
people  were  solemnly  warned  from  thousands  of  pul- 
pits not  to  vote  for  any  Whig  candidate,  as  they  should 

>  See  the  London  GazeUe  during  the  months  of  February,  March,  and 
April.  1085. 

VOL.  II.  5 


64  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  "  [Ch.  TV. 

answer  it  to  Him  who  had  ordained  the  powers  that 
be,  and  who  had  pronounced  rebeUion  a  sin  not  less 
deadly  than  witchcraft.  All  these  advantages  the  pre- 
dominant party  not  only  used  to  the  utmost,  but  abused 
in  so  shameless  a  manner  that  grave  and  reflecting  men, 
who  had  been  true  to  the  monarchy  in  peril,  and  who 
bore  no  love  to  republicans  and  schismatics,  stood  aghast, 
and  augured  from  such  beginnings  the  approach  of  evil 
times.^ 

Yet  the  Whigs,  though  suffering  the  just  punish- 
ment of  their  errors,  though  defeated,  disheartened, 
and  disorganized,  did  not  yield  witliout  an  effoi't. 
They  were  still  numerous  among  the  traders  and  arti- 
sans of  the  towns,  and  among  the  yeomanry  and  peas- 
antry of  the  open  country.  In  some  districts,  in  Dor- 
setshire for  example,  and  in  Somersetshire,  they  were 
the  great  majority  of  the  population.  In  the  remod- 
elled boroughs  they  could  do  notliing :  but,  in  eveiy 
county  where  they  had  a  cliance,  they  struggled  des- 
perately. In  Bedfordshire,  which  had  lately  been  rep- 
resented by  the  virtuous  and  unfortunate  Russell,  they 
were  victorious  on  the  show  of  hands,  but  were  beaten 
at  the  poll.^  In  Essex  they  polled  thirteen  hundred 
votes  to  eig-hteen  hundred.^  At  the  election  for  North- 
amptonshire  the  common  people  were  so  violent  in  their 
hostility  to  the  court  candidate  that  a  body  of  troo{>s 

'  It  would  be  easy  to  fill  a  volume  -with  what  Whig  historians  and 
pamphleteers  have  ^vritten  on  this  subject.  I  will  cite  only  one  witnes-^, 
a  churchman  and  a  Tory.  "Elections,"  says  Evelvn,  "were  thouglt  to 
be  verj'  indecently  carried  on  in  most  places.  God  give  a  better  issue  of  it 
than  some  expect!  "  (May  10.  168.5.)  Again  he  says,  "  The  truth  is  there 
were  many  of  the  new  menibers  whose  elections  and  returns  were  univer- 
sall3'  condemned."     (May  22.) 

'  This  f;ict  I  learned  from  a  newsletter  in  the  librarj'  of  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution. Van  Citters  mentions  the  strength  of  the  Whig  party  in  Bedford- 
shire. 

3  Bramston's  Memoirs. 


16&5.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  65 

was  drawn  out  in  the  market  place  of  the  county  town, 
and  was  ordered  to  load  with  ball.^  The  history  of 
the  contest  for  Buckinohtimshire  is  still  more  remark- 
able.  The  Whii^  candidate,  Thomas  Wharton,  eldest 
son  of  Philip  Lord  Wharton,  was  a  man  distinguished 
alike  by  dexterity  and  by  audacity,  and  destined  to 
play  a  conspicuous,  though  not  always  a  respectable, 
part  in  the  politics  of  several  reigns.  He  had  been 
one  of  those  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  who 
had  carried  up  the  Exclusion  Bill  to  the  bar  of  the 
Lords.  The  court  was  therefore  bent  on  throwing 
him  out  by  fair  or  foul  means.  The  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice Jeffreys  himself  came  down  into  Buckinghamshire, 
for  the  purpose  of  assisting  a  gentleman  named  Hacket, 
who  stood  on  the  high  Tory  interest.  A  stratagem 
was  devised  which,  it  was  thought,  could  not  fail  of 
success.  It  was  given  out  that  the  polling  would  take 
place  at  Ailesbury  ;  and  Wharton,  whose  skill  in  all 
the  arts  of  electioneering  was  unrivalled,  made  his 
arrangements  on  that  supposition.  At  a  moment's 
warning  the  Sheriff  adjourned  the  poll  to  Newj)ort 
Pagnell.  Wharton  and  his  friends  hurried  thither,  and 
found  that  Hacket,  who  was  in  the  secret,  had  already 
secured  every  inn  and  lodging.  The  Whig  freeholders 
were  compelled  to  tie  their  horses  to  the  hedges,  and 
to  s\ee\)  under  the  open  sky  in  the  meadows  which  sur- 
round the  little  town.  It  was  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty that  refreshments  could  be  procured  at  such  short 
notice  for  so  large  a  number  of  men  and  beasts,  though 
Wharton,  who  was  utterly  regardless  of  money  when 
his  ambition  and  party  spirit  were  roused,  disbursed 
fifreen  hundred  pomuls  in  one  day,  an  hnmense  outlay 

'  Reflections  on  a  Remonstrance  and  Protestation  of  all  the  good  Protes- 
tants of  this  Kingdom,  1081);  Dialogue  between  Two  Friends,  1689. 


66  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

for  those  times.  Injustice  seems,  however,  to  have 
animated  the  courage  of  the  stoutltearted  yeomen  of 
Bucks,  the  sons  of  the  constituents  of  John  Hampden. 
Not  only  was  Wharton  at  the  head  of  the  poll ;  but  he 
was  able  to  spare  his  second  votes  to  a  man  of  moder- 
ate opinions,  and  to  throw  out  the  Chief  Justice's  can- 
didate.^ 

In  Cheshire  the  contest  lasted  six  days.  The  Whigs 
polled  about  seventeen  hundred  votes,  the  Tories  about 
two  thousand.  The  common  people  were  vehement 
on  the  Whig  side,  raised  the  cry  of  "  Down  with  the 
Bishops,"  insulted  the  clergy  in  the  streets  of  Chester, 
knocked  doAvn  one  gentleman  of  the  Tory  party,  broke 
the  windows  and  beat  the  constables.  The  militia  was 
called  out  to  quell  the  riot,  and  was  kept  assembled,  in 
order  to  protect  the  festivities  of  the  conquerors.  When 
the  poll  closed,  a  salute  of  five  great  guns  from  the 
castle,  proclaimed  the  triumph  of  the  Church  and  the 
Crown  to  the  surrounding  country.  The  bells  rang. 
The  newly  elected  members  went  in  state  to  the  City 
Cross,  accompanied  by  a  band  of  music,  and  by  a  long 
train  of  knights  and  squires.  The  procession,  as  it 
marched,  sang  "  Joy  to  Great  Caesar,"  a  loyal  ode, 
which  had  lately  been  written  by  Durfey,  and  which, 
though,  like  all  Durfey's  writings,  utterly  contemptible, 
was,  at  that  time,  almost  as  popular  as  Lillibullero  be- 
came a  few  years  later.^  Round  the  Cross  the  train- 
bands were  drawn  up  in  order  :  a  bonfire  was  lighted : 
the  Exclusion  Bill  was  burned :  and  the  health  of  Kino; 
James  was  drunk  with  loud  acclamations.  The  fol- 
lowing day  was  Sunday.     In  the  morning  the  militia 

1  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Thomas  Marquess  of  Wharton,  1715. 

2  See  the  Guardian,  No.  67. ;  an  exquisite  specimen  of  Addison's  pecu- 
liar manner.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any  other  writer  such  an 
instance  of  benevolence  delicately  flavoured  with  contempt. 


1685.1  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  67 

lined  the  streets  leading  to  tlie  Cathedral.  The  two 
knights  of  the  shire  were  escorted  Avith  great  pomp 
to  the  choir  by  the  magistracy  of  tlie  City,  heard 
the  Dean  preach  a  sermon,  probably  on  the  duty  of 
passive  obedience,  and  were  afterwards  feasted  by  the 
Mayor.^ 

In  Northumberland  the  triumph  of  Sir  John  Fen- 
wick,  a  courtier  whose  name  afterwards  obtained  a 
melancholy  celebrity,  was  attended  by  circumstances 
which  excited  interest  in  London,  and  which  were 
thought  not  unworthy  of  being  mentioned  in  the  de- 
spatches of  foreign  ministers.  Newcastle  was  lighted 
up  with  great  piles  of  coal.  The  steeples  sent  forth 
a  joyous  peal.  A  copy  of  the  Exclusion  Bill,  and 
a  black  box,  resembling  that  which,  according  to  the 
popular  fable,  contained  the  contract  between  Charles 
the  Second  and  Lucy  Walters,  were  publicly  committed 
to  the  flames,  with  loud  acclamations.^ 

The  general  result  of  the  elections  exceeded  the 
most  sanguine  expectations  of  the  court.  James  found 
with  delight  that  it  would  be  unnecessary  for  him  to 
expend  a  farthing  in  buying  votes.  He  said  that,  with 
the  exception  of  about  forty  members,  the  House  of 
Commons  was  just  such  as  he  should  himself  have 
named.^  And  this  House  of  Commons  it  was  in  his 
power,  as  the  law  then  stood,  to  keep  to  the  end  of  his 
reign. 

Secure  of  parliamentary  support,  he  might  now  in- 
dulge in  the  luxury  of  revenge.  Plis  natiu-e  was  not 
placable  ;  and,  while  still  a  subject,  he  had  suffered 
some  injuries  and  indignities  wiiich  might  move  even  a 

1  The  Obsenator,  April  4.  1085. 

2  Despatch  of  the  Dutch  Ambassadors,  April  14.  1G85. 
8  Burnet,  i.  G2G. 


68  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  FV 

placable  nature  to  fierce  and  lasting  resentment.  One 
set  of  men  in  particular  had,  with  a  baseness  and  cruelty 
beyond  all  example  and  all  description,  attacked  his 
honour  and  his  life,  the  witnesses  of  the  plot.  He  may 
well  be  excused  for  hating  them  ;  since,  even  at  this 
day,  the  mention  of  their  names  excites  the  disgust  and 
horror  of  all  sects  and  parties. 

Some  of  these  wretches  were  already  beyond  the 
reach  of  human  justice.  Bedloe  had  died  in  his  wick- 
edness, without  one  sign  of  remorse  or  shame. ^  I^ug- 
daie  had  followed  to  the  grave,  driven  mad,  men  said, 
by  the  Furies  of  an  evil  conscience,  and  with  loud 
shrieks  imploring  those  who  stood  round  his  bed  to 
take  away  Lord  Stafford.^  Carstairs,  too,  was  gone. 
His  end  was  all  horror  and  despair  ;  and,  with  his  last 
breath,  he  had  told  his  attendants  to  throw  him  into  a 
ditch  like  a  dog,  for  that  he  was  not  fit  to  sleep  in  a 
Christian  burial  ground.^  But  Oates  and  Dangerfield 
were  still  within  the  reach  of  the  stern  prince  whom 
Proceedings  they  had  wrougcd.  James,  a  short  time  be- 
Oates.  fore  his  accession,  had  instituted  a  civil  suit 

against  Oates  for  defamatory  words :  and  a  jury  had 
given  damages  to  the  enormous  amount  of  a  hundred 
thousand  pounds.*  The  defendant  had  been  taken 
in  execution,  and  was  lying  in  prison  as  a  debtor, 
without  hope  of  release.  Two  bills  of  indictment 
against  him  for  perjury  had  been  found  by  the  grand 
jury  of  Middlesex,  a  few  weeks  before  the  death  of 
Charles.  Soon  after  the  close  of  the  elections  the  trial 
came  on. 

1  A  faithful  account  of  the  Sickness,  Death,  and  Burial  of  Captain  Bed- 
low,  1680;  NaiTative  of  Lord  Chief  Justice  North. 

2  Smith's  Intrigues  of  the  Popish  Plot,  1685. 
8  Burnet,  i.  439. 

*  See  the  proceedings  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials. 


lfiS5.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  69 

Among  the  upper  and  middle  classes  Oates  had 
few  friends  left.  All  intellio-ent  Whigs  were  now  con- 
vinced  that,  even  if  his  narrative  had  some  founda- 
tion in  fact,  he  had  erected  on  that  foundation  a  vast 
superstructure  of  romance.  A  considerable  number  of 
low  fanatics,  however,  still  regarded  him  as  a  public 
benefactor.  These  people  well  knew  that,  if  he  were 
convicted,  his  sentence  would  be  one  of  extreme 
severity,  and  were  therefore  indefatigable  in  their  en- 
deavours to  manage  an  escape.  Though  as  yet  in  con- 
finement only  for  debt,  he  was  put  into  irons  by  the 
authorities  of  the  King's  Bench  prison  ;  and  even  so  he 
was  with  difficulty  kept  in  safe  custody.  The  mastiff 
that  guarded  his  door  was  poisoned ;  and,  on  the  very 
night  preceding  his  trial,  a  ladder  of  ropes  was  intro- 
duced into  his  cell. 

On  the  day  in  which  Titus  was  brought  to  the  bar, 
Westminster  Hall  was  crowded  with  spectators,  among 
whom  were  many  Roman  Catholics,  eager  to  see  the 
misery  and  humiliation  of  their  persecutor.^  A  few 
years  earlier  his  short  neck,  his  legs  luieven,  the  vul- 
gar said,  as  those  of  a  badger,  his  forehead  low  as  that 
of  a  baboon,  his  purple  cheeks,  and  his  monstrous  length 
of  chin,  had  been  familiar  to  all  who  frequented  the 
courts  of  law.  He  had  then  been  the  idol  of  the  nation. 
Wherever  he  had  appeared  men  had  uncovered  their 
heads  to  him.  The  lives  and  estates  of  the  magnates 
of  the  realm  had  been  at  his  mercy.  Times  had  now 
clianged  ;  and  many,  who  had  formerly  regarded  him 
as  the  deliverer  of  his  country,  shuddered  at  the  sight 
of  those  hideous  features  on  which  villany  seemed  to 
be  written  by  the  hand  of  God.^ 

1  Evelyn's  Diary,  May  7.  1G85. 

2  There  remain  many  [)ictures  of  Gates.    The  most  striking  descriptioM 


70  HISTOEY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

It^was  proved,  beyond  all  possibility  of  doubt,  that 
this  man  had,  by  false  testimony,  deliberately  murdered 
several  guiltless  persons.  He  called  in  vain  on  the 
most  eminent  members  of  the  Parliaments  which  had 
rewarded  and  extolled  him  to  give  evidence  in  his  fa- 
vour. Some  of  those  whom  he  had  summoned  absented 
themselves.  None  of  them  said  anything  tending  to  his 
vindication.  One  of  them,  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  bit- 
terly reproached  him  with  having  deceived  the  Houses 
and  drawn  on  them  the  guilt  of  shedding  innocent 
blood.  The  Judges  browbeat  and  reviled  the  prisoner 
with  an  intemperance  which,  even  in  the  most  atro- 
cious cases,  ill  becomes  the  judicial  character.  He  be- 
trayed, however,  no  sign  of  fear  or  of  shame,  and  faced 
the  storm  of  invective  which  burst  upon  him  from  bar, 
bench,  and  witness  box,  with  the  insolence  of  despair. 
He  Avas  convicted  on  both  indictments.  His  offence, 
though,  in  a  moral  light,  murder  of  the  most  aggra- 
vated kind,  was,  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  merely  a  mis- 
demeanour. The  tribunal,  however,  was  desirous  to 
make  his  punishment  more  severe  than  that  of  felons 
or  traitors,  and  not  merely  to  put  him  to  death,  but  to 
put  him  to  death  by  frightful  torments.  He  was 
sentenced  to  be  stripped  of  his  clerical  habit,  to  be 
pilloried  in  Palace  Yard,  to  be  led  round  Westminster 
Hall  with  an  inscription  declaring  his  infamy  over  his 
head,  to  be  pilloried  again  in  front  of  the  Royal  Ex- 
change, to  be  whipped  from  Aldgate  to  Newgate,  and, 
after  an  interval  of  two  days,  to  be  whipped  from 
Newgate  to  Tyburn.  If,  against  all  probability,  he 
should  happen  to  survive  this  horrible  infliction,  he 
was  to  be  kept  close  prisoner  during  hfe.     Five  times 

of  his  person  are  in  North's  Examen,  225.,  in  Dryden's  Absalom  and  Achi- 
tophel,  and  in  a  broadside  entitled,  A  Hue  and  Cry  after  T.  O. 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  71 

every  year  he  was  to  be  brought  fortli  from  his  dun- 
geon and  exposed  on  the  pillory  in  different  parts  of 
tJie  capital.^ 

This  rigorous  sentence  was  rigorously  executed. 
On  the  day  on  which  Gates  was  pilloried  in  Palace 
Yard,  he  was  mercilessly  pelted  and  ran  some  risk  of 
being  pulled  in  pieces.^  But  in  the  City  his  partisans 
mustered  in  great  force,  raised  a  riot,  and  upset  the 
pillory.^  They  were,  however,  unable  to  rescue  their 
favourite.  It  was  su]:)posed  that  he  would  try  to  escape 
the  horrible  doom  which  awaited  him  by  swallowing 
poison.  All  that  he  ate  and  drank  was  therefore  care- 
fully inspected.  On  the  following  morning  he  was 
brought  forth  to  undergo  his  first  flogging.  At  an 
early  hour  an  innumerable  multitude  filled  all  the 
streets  from  Aldgate  to  the  Old  Bailey.  The  hang- 
man laid  on  the  lash  with  such  unusual  severity  as 
showed  that  he  had  received  special  insti-uctions.  The 
blood  ran  down  in  rivulets.  For  a  time  the  criminal 
showed  a  strange  constancy  :  but  at  last  his  stubborn 
fortitude  save  way.  His  bellowings  were  frightful  to 
hear.  He  swooned  several  times  ;  but  the  scourge  still 
continued  to  descend.  When  he  was  unbound,  it 
seemed  that  he  had  borne  as  much  as  the  human 
frame  can  bear  without  dissolution.  James  was  in- 
treated  to  remit  the  second  flogging.  His  answer  was 
short  and  clear,  "  He  shall  go  through  with  it,  if  he 
has  breath  in  his  body."  An  attem])t  was  made  to 
obtain  the  Queen's  intercession  ;  but  she  indignantly 
refused  to   say  a  word  in  favour  of  such    a   wretch. 

1  The  proceedings  will  be  found  at  length  in  the  Collection  of  SUt« 
Trials. 

«     ^  ,      «  Mnv  29.   ^-,-^„ 

2  Gazette  de  France,  j;^^;^  1685. 

»  Despatch  of  the  Dutch  Ambassadors,  May  ^.  1685. 


72  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

After  an  interval  of  only  forty-eight  hours,  Oates  was 
again  brought  out  of  his  dungeon.  He  was  unable  to 
stand,  and  it  was  necessary  to  drag  him  to  Tyburn  on 
a  sledge.  He  seemed  quite  insensible  ;  and  the  Tories 
reported  that  he  had  stupefied  himself  with  strong 
drink.  A  person  who  counted  the  stripes  on  the 
second  day  said  that  they  were  seventeen  hundred. 
The  bad  man  escaped  with  life,  but  so  narrowly  that 
his  ignorant  and  bigoted  admirei's  thought  his  recovery 
miraculous,  and  appealed  to  it  as  a  proof  of  his  inno- 
cence. The  doors  of  the  prison  closed  upon  him. 
During  many  months  he  remained  ironed  in  the  dark- 
est hole  of  Newgate.  It  was  said  that  in  his  cell  he 
gave  himself  up  to  melancholy,  and  sate  whole  days 
uttering  deep  groans,  his  arms  folded,  and  his  hat 
pulled  over  his  eyes.  It  was  not  in  England  alone 
that  these  events  excited  strong  interest.  Millions  of 
Roman  Catholics,  who  knew  nothing  of  our  institu- 
tions or  of  our  factions,  had  heard  that  a  persecution 
of  singular  barbarity  had  raged  in  our  island  against 
the  professors  of  the  true  faith,  that  many  pious  men 
had  suffered  martyrdom,  and  that  Titus  Oates  had  been 
the  chief  murderer.  There  was,  therefore,  great  joy 
in  distant  countries  when  it  was  known  that  the  divine 
justice  had  overtaken  him.  Engravings  of  him,  look- 
ing out  from  tlie  pillory,  and  writhing  at  the  cart's  tail, 
were  circulated  all  over  Europe  ;  and  epigrammatists, 
in  many  languages,  made  merry  with  the  doctoral  -title 
which  he  pretended  to  have  received  fi'om  the  Univer- 
sity of  Salamanca,  and  remarked  that,  since  his  fore- 
head could  not  be  made  to  blush,  it  was  but  reasonable 
that  his  back  should  do  so.^ 

1  Evelyn's  Dian',  May  22.  1685;  Eachard,  iii.  741.;  Bumet,  i.  637.;  Ob- 
lervator,  May  27.  1G85;   Oates's  Et/tu'v,    89.  j   EUuv  l3poTo'Aoiyov,  1G97; 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  73 

Horrible  as  were  the  sufferings  of  Oates,  they  did 
not  equal  his  cinmes.  The  old  law  of  England,  Avhich 
had  been  suffered  to  become  obsolete,  treated  the  false 
witness,  who  had  caused  death  by  means  of  perjury,  as 
a  murderer.!  This  was  wise  and  righteous :  for  such 
a  witness  is,  in  truth,  the  worst  of  murderers.  To  the 
guilt  of  shedding  innocent  blood  he  has  added  the  guilt 
of  violating  the  most  solemn  engagement  into  which 
man  can  enter  with  his  fellow  men,  and  of  making  m- 
stitutions,  to  which  it  is  desirable  that  the  public  should 
look  witli  respect  and  confidence,  instruments  of  fright- 
ful wrong  and  objects  of  general  distrust.  The  pain 
produced  by  ordinary  murder  bears  no  proportion 
to  the  pain  produced  by  murder  of  which  the  courts 
of  justice  are  made  the  agents.  The  mere  extinc- 
tion of  life  is  a  very  small  part  of  what  makes  an 
execution  hon*ible.  The  prolonged  mental  agony  of 
the  sufferer,  the  shame  and  misery  of  all  connected 
with  him,  the  stain  abiding  even  to  the  third  and  fourth 
generation,  are  things  far  more  dreadful  than  death 
itself.  In  general  it  may  be  safely  affirmed  that  the 
father  of  a  laro-e  family  would  rather  be  bereaved  of  all 

Commons'  Journals  of  May,  June,  and  July,  1689 ;  Tom  Brown's  Advice  to 
Dr.  Oates.  Some  interestiii<^  circiinistanfcs  are  mentioned  in  a  broadside, 
printed  for  A.  IJrooks,  Charing  Cross,  lOS-'J.  I  have  seen  contemporary 
French  and  Italian  pamjililets  containing  the  history  of  the  trial  and  exe- 
cution. A  print  of  Titus  in  the  pillory  was  published  at  IMilan,  with  the 
following  curious  inscription:  "(Juesto  c  il  naturale  ritratto  di  Tito  Otez, 

0  vero  Oatz,  Inglcse,  posto  in  berlina,  uno  de'  principali  professori  dclla 
religion  protcstante,  acerrimo  persecutore  de'  Cattolici,  e  gran  spergiuro." 

1  have  also  seen  a  Dutch  engraving  of  his  punishment,  with  some  Latin 

verses,  of  which  the  following  are  a  specimen: 

t 
"  At  Doctor  fictus  non  ficto.s  pertulit  ictus, 
A  tortore  Jatos  baud  uioUi  in  corporc  gratoB, 
Diflcerpt  ut  vere  scclcra  ob  comuns.Sii  rubere." 

The  anagram  ofliis  name,  "  Testis  Ovat,"  may  be  found  on  many  prints 
published  in  different  countries. 
1  Blackstone's  Commentaries,  Chapter  of  Homicide. 


74  HISTORY  OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

his  children  by  accident  or  by  disease  than  lose  one  of 
them  by  the  hands  of  the  hangman.  Murder  by  false 
testimony  is  therefore  the  most  aggravated  species  of 
murder :  and  Oates  had  been  guilty  of  many  such 
murders.  Nevertheless  the  punishment  which  was 
inflicted  upon  him  cannot  be  justified.  In  sentencing 
him  to  be  stripped  of  his  ecclesiastical  habit  and  im- 
prisoned for  life,  the  judges  exceeded  their  legal  power. 
They  were  undoubtedly  competent  to  inflict  whipping; 
nor  had  the  law  assigned  a  limit  to  tlie  number  of 
stripes.  But  the  spirit  of  the  law  clearly  was  that  no 
misdemeanour  sliould  be  punished  more  severely  than 
the  most  atrocious  felonies.  The  worst  felon  could 
only  be  hanged.  The  judges,  as  they  believed,  sen- 
tenced Oates  to  be  scourged  to  death.  That  the  law 
was  defective  is  not  a  sufficient  excuse  :  for  defective 
laws  should  be  altered  by  the  legislature,  and  not 
strained  by  the  tribunals  ;  and  least  of  all  should  the 
law  be  strained  for  the  purpose  of  inflicting  torture  and 
destroying  life.  That  Oates  was  a  bad  man  is  not  a 
sufficient  excuse  ;  for  the  guilty  are  almost  always  the 
first  to  suffer  those  hardships  which  are  afterwards 
used  as  precedents  against  the  innocent.  Thus  it  was 
in  the  present  case.  Merciless  flogging  soon  became 
an  ordinary  punishment  for  political  misdemeanours  of 
no  very  aggravated  kind.  Men  were  sentenced,  for 
hasty  words  spoken  against  the  government,  to  ])ain 
so  excruciating  that  they,  with  unfeigned  earnestness, 
begged  to  be  brought  to  trial  on  capital  charges,  and 
sent  to  the  gallows.  Happily  the  progress  of  this  great 
evil  was  speedily  stopped  by  the  Revolution,  and  by 
that  article  of  the  Bill  of  Riohts  which  condemns  all 
sruel  and  unusual  punishments. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  75 

The  villany  of  Dangerfield  had    not,  Hke    that   of 
Oates,  destroyed  many  innocent  victims  ;  for  Proceedings 

T^  /^.    1111  1  1  IP     against 

Dangerneld  had  not  taken  up  the  trade  oi  Dungerfieid. 
a  witness  till  the  plot  had  been  blown  upon  and  till 
juries  had  become  incredulous.^  He  was  brought  to 
trial,  not  for  perjury,  but  for  the  less  heinous  offence 
of  libel.  He  had,  during  the  agitation  caused  by  the 
Exclusion  Bill,  put  forth  a  narrative  containing  some 
false  and  odious  imputations  on  the  late  and  on  the 
present  King.  For  this  publication  he  was  now,  after 
the  lapse  of  five  years,  suddenly  taken  up,  brought 
before  the  Privy  Council,  committed,  tried,  convicted, 
and  sentenced  to  be  whij:)ped  from  Aldgate  to  Newgate 
and  from  Newgate  to  Tyburn.  The  wretched  man 
behaved  with  great  effrontery  during  the  trial  ;  but, 
when  he  heard  his  doom,  he  went  into  agonies  of  de- 
spair, gave  himself  up  for  dead,  and  chose  a  text  for  his 
funeral  sermon.  His  forebodings  were  just.  He  was 
not,  indeed,  scourged  quite  so  severely  as  Oates  had 
been  ;  but  he  had  not  Oates's  iron  strength  of  bodv  and 
mind.  After  the  execution  Dangerfield  was  put  into 
a  hackney  coach  and  was  taken  back  to  prison.  As  he 
passed  the  corner  of  Hatton  Garden,  a  Tory  gentleman 
of  Gray's  Inn,  named  Francis,  stopped  the  carriage, 
and  cried  out  with  brutal  levity,  "  Well,  friend,  have 
you  had  your  heat  this  morning  ? "  The  bleeding 
prisoner,  maddened  by  this  insult,  answered  with  a 
curse.     Francis  instantly  struck  him   in    the   face  Avith 

1  Accordinf?  to  Eogrr  Nortli  tlio  jiiflgt's  dccidod  that  Dangerfield,  having 
been  previously  convicted  of  p(!rjurv,  was  iucoinpetent  to  be  a  witness  of 
the  plot.  Hut  this  is  one  anion^^  many  instances  of  Roger's  inaccuracy. 
It  appears,  from  the  report  of  the  trial  of  Lord  Castclmaine  in  June  1G80, 
that,  after  much  altercation  between  counsel,  and  much  consultation  among 
the  judges  of  the  diliercnt  courts  in  Westminster  Hall,  Dangerlield  was 
»\v(iiii,  ami  >ull'ercd  to  tell  liis  story:  but  tiie  jury  very  properly  gave  no 
credit  to  his  (estiiuouv. 


76  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

a  cane  which  injured  the  eye.  Dangerfield  was  car- 
ried dying  into  Newgate.  This  dastardly  outrage 
roused  the  indignation  of  the  bystanders.  They  seized 
Francis,  and  were  with  difficulty  restrained  from  tear- 
ing him  to  pieces.  The  appearance  of  Dangerfield's 
body,  which  had  been  fi'ightfully  lacerated  by  the  whip, 
inclined  many  to  believe  that  his  death  was  chiefly, 
if  not  wholly,  caused  by  the  stripes  which  he  had 
received.  The  government  and  the  Chief  Justice 
thought  it  convenient  to  lay  the  whole  blame  on  Fran- 
cis, who,  though  he  seems  to  have  been  at  worst  guilty 
only  of  aggravated  manslaughter,  was  tried  and  exe- 
cuted for  murder.  His  dying  speech  is  one  of  the 
most  curious  monuments  of  that  age.  The  savage 
spirit  which  had  brought  him  to  the  gallows  remained 
with  him  to  the  last.  Boasts  of  his  loyalty  and  abuse 
of  the  Whigs  were  mingled  with  the  parting  ejacula- 
tions in  which  he  commended  his  soul  to  the  divine 
mercy.  An  idle  rumour  had  been  circulated  that  his 
wife  was  in  love  with  Dangerfield,  who  was  eminently 
handsome  and  renowned  for  gallantry.  The  fatal  blow, 
it  was  said,  had  been  prompted  by  jealousy.  The  dy- 
ing husband,  with  an  earnestness,  half  ridiculous,  half 
pathetic,  vindicated  the  lady's  character.  She  was, 
he  said,  a  virtuous  woman  :  she  came  of  a  loyal  stock, 
and,  if  she  had  been  inclined  to  break  her  marriage 
vow,  would  at  least  have  selected  a  Tory  and  a  church- 
man for  her  paramour.^ 

1  Dangerfield's  trial  was  not  reported;  but  I  have  seen  a  concise  account 
of  it  in  a  contemporary  broadside.  An  abstract  of  the  evidence  against 
Francis,  and  his  d_ying  speech,  will  be  found  in  the  Collection  of  State 
Trials.  See  Eachard,  iii.  741.  Burnet's  n.arrative  contains  more  mistakes 
than  lines.  See  also  North's  Examen,  256.,  the  sketch  of  Dangerfield's 
life  in  the  Bloody  Assizes,  the  Observator  of  July  29.  1G85,  and  the  poem 
entitled  '•  Dange^jfield's  Ghost  to  Jeffreys."  In  the  very  rare  volume  en- 
titled "  Succinct  Genealogies,  by  Robert  Halstead,"  Lord  Peterborough 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  T7 

About  the  same  time  a  culprit,  who  bore  very  little 
resemblance  to  Oates  or  Dangerfeld,  appeared  Proceedings 
on  the  floor  of  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  Baxter. 
No  eminent  chief  of  a  party  has  ever  passed  through 
many  years  of  civil  and  religious  dissension  with  more 
innocence  than  Richard  Baxter.  He  belonged  to  the 
mildest  and  most  temperate  section  of  the  Puritan 
body.  He  was  a  young  man  when  the  civil  war  broke 
out.  He  thought  that  the  right  was  on  the  side  of  the 
Houses  ;  and  he  had  no  scruple  about  acting  as  chap- 
lain to  a  regiment  in  the  parliamentary  army  :  but  his 
clear  and  somewhat  sceptical  understanding,  and  his 
strong  sense  of  justice,  preserved  him  fi'om  all  excesses. 
He  exerted  himself  to  check  the  fanatical  violence  of 
the  soldiery.  He  condemned  the  proceedings  of  the 
High  Court  of  Justice.  In  the  days  of  the  Common- 
wealth he  had  the  boldness  to  express,  on  many  occa- 
sions, and  once  even  in  Cromwell's  presence,  love  and 
reverence  for  the  ancient  institutions  of  the  covmtry. 
While  the  royal  family  was  in  exile,  Baxter's  life  was 
chiefly  passed  at  Kidderminster  in  the  assiduous  dis- 
charge of  parochial  duties.  He  heartily  concurred  in 
the  Restoration,  and  was  sincerely  desirous  to  bring 
about  an  union  between  Episcopalians  and  Presbyte- 
rians. For,  with  a  liberality  rare  in  his  time,  he  con- 
sidered questions  of  ecclesiastical  }>olity  as  of  small 
account  when  com])ared  with  the  great  principles  of 
Christianity,  and  had  never,  even  wlien  j)relacy  was 
most  odious  to  the  ruling  powers,  joined  in  the  outcry 
against  Bishops.  The  attempt  to  reconcile  the  con- 
tendincr  factions  failed.     Baxter  cast  in  his  lot  with  his 


o 


says  that  Panffcrfield,  with  whom  he  had  had  some  intercourse,  was  "• 
younp  mat  who  appeared  under  a  decent  flf;iii"e,  a  serious  beha^  lour,  and 
irith  words  tbat  did  not  seem  to  proceed  from  a  common  understanding." 


78  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

proscribed  friends,  refused  the  mitre  of  Hereford, 
quitted  the  parsonage  of  Kidderminster,  and  gave  him- 
self up  almost  wholly  to  study.  His  theological  writ- 
ings, though  too  moderate  to  be  pleasing  to  the  bigots 
of  any  party,  had  an  immense  reputation.  Zealous 
Churchmen  called  him  a  Roundhead  ;  and  many  Non- 
conformists accused  him  of  Erastianism  and  Arminian- 
ism.  But  the  integrity  of  his  heart,  the  purity  of  his 
life,  the  vigour  of  his  faculties,  and  the  extent  of  his 
attainments  were  acknowledged  by  the  best  and  wisest 
men  of  every  persuasion.  His  political  opinions,  in 
spite  of  the  oppression  which  he  and  his  brethren  had 
suffered,  were  moderate.  He  was  friendly  to  that  small 
party  which  was  hated  by  both  Whigs  and  Tories. 
He  could  not,  he  said,  join  in  cursing  the  Trimmers, 
when  he  remembered  who  it  was  that  had  blessed  the 
peacemakers.^ 

In  a  Commentary  on  the  New  Testament  he  had 
complained,  with  some  bitterness,  of  the  persecution 
which  the  Dissenters  suffered.  That  men  who,  for  not 
using  the  Prayer  Book,  had  been  driven  from  their 
homes,  stripped  of  their  propert}^  and  locked  up  in 
dungeons,  should  dare  to  utter  a  murmur,  was  then 
thought  a  high  crime  against  the  State  and  the  Church. 
Roger  Lestrange,  the  champion  of  the  government 
and  the  oracle  of  the  clergy,  sounded  the  note  of  Avar 
in  the  Observator.  An  information  was  filed.  Bax- 
ter begged  that  he  might  be  allowed  some  time  to  pre- 
pare for  his  defence.  It  was  on  the  day  on  which 
Gates  was  pilloried  in  Palace  Yard  tliat  the  illustrious 
chief  of  the  Puritans,  oppressed  by  age  and  infirmities, 
came  to  Westminster  Hall  to  make  this  request.  Jef- 
freys burst  into  a  storm  of  x-age.     "  Not  a  minute,"  he 

»  Baxter's  preface  to  Sir  Matthew  Hale's  Judgment  of  the  Nature  of  True 
Religion,  1684. 


1«85.]  JAMES   THE  SECOND.  79 

cried,  "  to  save  his  life.  I  can  deal  with  saints  as  well 
as  with  sinners.  There  stands  Gates  on  one  side  of 
the  pillory  ;  and,  if  Baxter  stood  on  the  other,  tlie  two 
greatest  rogues  in  the  kingdom  would  stand  together." 

When  the  trial  came  on  at  Guildhall,  a  crowd  of 
those  who  loved  and  honoured  Baxter  filled  tlie  court. 
At  his  side  stood  Doctor  William  Bates,  one  of  the 
most  eminent  of  the  Nonconformist  divines.  Two 
Whig  barristers  of  great  note,  Pollexfen  and  Wallop, 
appeared  for  the  defendant.  Pollexfen  had  scarce  be- 
gun his  address  to  the  jury,  when  the  Chief  Justice 
broke  forth  :  "  Pollexfen,  I  know  you  well.  I  will  set 
a  mark  on  you.  You  are  the  patron  of  the  faction. 
This  is  an  old  rogue,  a  schismatical  knave,  a  hyjjocriti- 
cal  villain.  He  hates  the  Liturgy.  He  would  have 
nothing  but  longwinded  cant  without  book :  "  and  tiien 
his  Lordship  turned  up  his  eyes,  clasped  his  hands,  and 
began  to  sing  through  his  nose,  in  imitation  of  what  he 
supposed  to  be  Baxter's  style  of  praying,  "  Lord,  we 
are  thy  people,  thy  peculiar  people,  thy  dear  people." 
Pollexfen  gently  reminded  the  court  that  his  late  Maj- 
esty had  thought  Baxter  deserving  of  a  bishopric. 
*'  And  what  ailed  the  old  blockhead  then,"  cried  Jef- 
freys, "  that  he  did  not  take  it  ?  "  His  fury  now  rose 
almost  to  madness.  He  called  Baxter  a  doo-,  and  SAvore 
that  it  would  be  no  more  than  justice  to  whip  such  a 
villain  through  the  whole  City. 

Wallop  interposed,  but  fared  no  better  than  his 
leader.  "  You  are  in  all  these  dirty  causes,  Mr.  Wal- 
lop,"  said  the  Judge.  "  Gentlemen  of  the  lono;  robe 
ought  to  be  ashamed  to  assist  such  factious  knaves." 
The  advocate  made  another  attcmj)t  to  obtain  a  hear- 
ing, but  to  no  purpose.  "  If  you  do  not  know  your 
duty,"  said  Jeffreys,  "  I  will  teach  it  you." 

VOL.  II.  1} 


80  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

Wallop  sate  down ;  and  Baxter  himself  attempted 
to  put  in  a  word.  But  the  Chief  Justice  drowned  all 
expostulation  in  a  torrent  of  ribaldry  and  invective, 
mingled  with  scraps  of  Hudibras.  "My  Lord,"  said 
the  old  man,  "  I  have  been  much  blamed  by  Dissent- 
ers for  speaking  respectfully  of  Bishops."  "  Baxter 
for  Bishops !  "  cried  the  judge,  "  that 's  a  merry  con- 
ceit indeed.  I  know  what  you  mean  by  Bishops, 
rascals  like  yourself,  Kidderminster  Bishops,  factious 
snivelling  Presbyterians !  "  Again  Baxter  essayed  to 
speak,  and  again  Jeffreys  bellowed,  "  Richard,  Richard, 
dost  thou  think  we  will  let  thee  poison  the  court  ? 
Richard,  thou  art  an  old  knave.  Thou  hast  written 
books  enough  to  load  a  cart,  and  every  book  as  full  of 
sedition  as  an  egg  is  full  of  meat.  By  the  grace  of 
God,  I  '11  look  after  thee.  I  see  a  great  many  of  your 
brotherhood  waiting  to  know  what  will  befall  their 
mighty  Don.  And  there,"  he  continued,  fixing  his 
savage  eye  on  Bates,  "  there  is  a  Doctor  of  the  party 
at  your  elbow.  But,  by  the  grace  of  God  Almighty, 
I  will  crush  you  all." 

Baxter  held  his  peace.  But  one  of  the  junior  coun- 
sel for  the  defence  made  a  last  effort,  and  undertook 
to  show  that  the  words  of  which  complaint  was  made 
would  not  bear  the  construction  put  on  them  by  the 
information.  With  this  view  he  began  to  read  the 
context.  In  a  moment  he  was  roared  down.  "  You 
shan't  turn  the  court  into  a  conventicle."  The  noise 
of  weeping  was  heard  from  some  of  those  who  sur- 
rounded Baxter.  "  Snivelling  calves  ! "  said  the 
Judge. 

Witnesses  to  character  were  in  attendance,  and 
among  them  were  several  clergymen  of  the  Established 
Church.     But  the  Chief  Justice  would  hear  nothing. 


I 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  81 

■'  Does  your  Lordship  think,"  said  Baxter,  "that  any 
jury  will  convict  a  man  on  such  a  trial  as  this  ?  "  "I 
warrant  you,  Mr.  Baxter,"  said  Jeffreys :  "  don't 
trouble  yourself  about  that."  Jeffreys  was  right. 
"^I'lie  Sheriffs  were  the  tools  of  the  government.  The  ju- 
rymen, selected  by  the  Sheriffs  from  among  the  fiercest 
zealots  of  the  Tory  party,  conferred  for  a  moment,  and 
returned  a  verdict  of  guilty.  "  My  Lord,"  said  Bax- 
ter, as  he  left  the  court,  "  there  was  once  a  Chief  Jus- 
tice who  would  have  treated  me  very  differently." 
He  alluded  to  his  learned  and  virtuous  friend  Sir 
Matthew  Hale.  "  There  is  not  an  honest  man  in  Eno- 
land,"  answered  Jeffreys,  "  but  looks  on  thee  as  a 
knave."  ^ 

The  sentence  was,  for  those  times,  a  lenient  one. 
What  passed  in  conference  among  the  judges  cannot  be 
certainly  known.  It  was  believed  among  the  Noncon- 
formists, and  is  highly  probable,  that  the  Chief  Justice 
was  overruled  by  his  three  brethren.  He  proposed,  it 
is  said,  that  Baxter  should  be  whipped  through  London 
at  the  cart's  tail.  The  majority  thought  that  an  emi- 
nent divine,  who,  a  quarter  of  a  century  before,  had 
been  offered  a  mitre,  and  who  was  now  in  his  seven- 
tieth year,  would  be  sufficiently  punished  for  a  few 
sharp  words  by  fine  and  imprisonment.''^ 

The  manner  in  which  Baxter  was  treated  by  a  judge 
who  was  a  member  of  the  cabinet  and  a  fa-  Meeting  or 
vourite  of  the  sovereign  indicated,  in  a  man-   ^euto^f''^ 
nernot  to  be  mistaken,  the  feelinn;  with  which   ^''°^''^"'^- 
the  government  at  this  time  regarded  the  Protestant 

'  See  the  Observator  of  February  25.  1685,  the  infonnation  in  the  Col- 
lertion  of  State  Trials,  the  account  of  what  passed  in  court  given  by  Cal- 
Biiiy,  Life  of  Baxter,  chnp.  xiv.,  and  tiic  very  curious  extracts  from  the 
Baxter  M8S.  in  the.  Life,  \>y  Onne,  published  in  18:J0. 

'^  ilaxter  MS.  cited  bv  Onne. 


82  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IT. 

Nonconformists.  But  already  that  feeling  had  been 
indicated  by  still  stronger  and  more  terrible  signs. 
The  Parliament  of  Scotland  had  met.  James  had 
purjDosely  hastened  the  session  of  this  body,  and  had 
postponed  the  session  of  the  English  Houses,  in  the 
hope  that  the  example  set  at  Edinburgh  would  produce 
a  good  effect  at  Westminster.  For  the  legislature  of 
his  northern  kingdom  was  as  obsequious  as  those  pro- 
vincial Estates  which  Lewis  the  Fourteenth  still  suf- 
fered to  play  at  some  of  their  ancient  functions  in  Brit- 
anny  and  Burgundy.  None  but  an  Episcopalian  could 
sit  in  the  Scottish  Parliament,  or  could  even  vote  for  a 
member ;  and  in  Scotland  an  Episcopalian  was  always 
a  Tory  or  a  timeserver.  From  an  assembly  thus  con- 
stituted little  opposition  to  the  royal  wishes  was  to  be 
apprehended  ;  and  even  the  assembly  thus  constituted 
could  pass  no  law  which  had  not  been  previously  ap- 
proved by  a  committee  of  courtiers. 

All  that  the  government  asked  was  readily  granted. 
In  a  financial  point  of  view,  indeed,  the  liberalitv  of 
the  Scottish  Estates  was  of  little  consequence.  They 
gave,  however,  what  their  scanty  means  permitted. 
They  annexed  in  perpetuity  to  the  crown  the  duties 
which  had  been  granted  to  the  late  Kino;,  and  which 
in  his  time  had  been  estimated  at  forty  thousand  pounds 
sterling  a  year.  They  also  settled  on  James  for  life  an 
additional  annual  income  of  two  hundred  and  sixteen 
thousand  pounds  Scots,  equivalent  to  eighteen  thou- 
sand pounds  sterling.  The  whole  sum  which  they 
were  able  to  bestow  was  about  sixty  thousand  a  year, 
little  more  than  what  was  poured  into  the  English  Ex- 
chequer every  fortnight.^ 

1  Act  Pari.  Car.  II.  March  29.  1661;  Jac.  VII.  April  28.  1685,  and  May 
13.  1685. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  83 

Haviiif^  little  money  to  give,  the  Estates  supplied 
the  defect  by  loyal  professions  and  barbarous  statutes. 
The  King,  in  a  letter  which  was  read  to  them  at  the 
opening  of  their  session,  called  on  them  in  vehement 
language  to  ju'ovide  new  penal  laws  against  the  refrac- 
tory Presbyterians,  and  expressed  his  regret  that  busi- 
ness made  it  impossible  for  him  to  propose  such  laws 
in  person  from  the  throne.  His  commands  were  obeyed. 
A  statute  framed  by  his  ministers  was  promptly  passed, 
a  statute  which  stands  forth,  even  among  the  statutes 
of  that  unhaj)py  country  at  that  unhappy  pei'iod,  pre- 
eminent in  atrocity.  It  was  enacted,  in  few  but  em- 
phatic words,  that  whoever  should  preach  in  a  con- 
venticle under  a  roof,  or  should  attend,  either  as 
preacher  or  as  hearer,  a  conventicle  in  the  open  air, 
should  be  punished  with  death  and  confiscation  of 
property.^ 

This  law,  passed  at  the  King's  instance  by  an  assem- 
bly devoted  to  his  will,  deserves  especial  no-  Feeling  of 
tice.    For  he  has  been  frequently  represented  war'aTtue 
by  ignorant  writers  as  a  prince  rash,  indeed,   ^^'"'^"*"^- 
and  injudicious  in  his  choice  of  means,  but  intent  on 
one  of  the  noblest  ends  which  a  ruler  can  pursue,  the 
establishment  of  entire  religious  libert3\     Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  some  })ortions  of  his  lif(%  when  detached 
from  the  rest  and  suj)erficially  considered,  seem  to  war- 
rant this  favourable  view  of  his  character. 

While  a  subject  he  had  been,  during  many  years, 
a  persecuted  man  ;  and  persecution  had  produced  its 
usual  effect  on  him.  His  mind,  dull  and  narrow  as  it 
was,  had  profited  under  that  sharp  discipline.  While 
he  was  excluded  from  the  Court,  from  the  Admiralty, 

1  Act  Tarl.  Jiic.  VII.MayS.  1085;  Observalor,  .Jiine20.  1C85.    Lestrang* 
evidently  wished  to  see  the  precedent  followed  iu  Euyland. 


84  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  ICh  IV. 

and  from  the  Council,  and  was  in  danger  of  beino-  also 
excluded  from  the  tlnrone,  only  because  he  could  not 
help  believing  in  transubstantiation  and  in  the  author- 
ity of  the  see  of  Rome,  he  made  such  rapid  progress  in 
the  doctrines  of  toleration  that  he  left  Milton  and 
Locke  behind.  What,  he  often  said,  could  be  more 
unjust,  than  to  visit  speculations  with  penalties  which 
ought  to  be  reserved  for  acts  ?  What  more  impohtic 
than  to  reject  the  services  of  good  soldiers,  seamen, 
lawyers,  diplomatists,  financiers,  because  they  hold  un- 
sound opinions  about  the  number  of  the  sacraments  or 
the  pluripresence  of  saints  ?  He  learned  by  rote  those 
commonplaces  which  all  sects  repeat  so  fluently  when 
they  are  enduring  oppression,  and  forget  so  easily  when 
they  are  able  to  retaliate  it.  Indeed  he  rehearsed  his 
lesson  so  well,  that  those  who  chanced  to  hear  him  on 
this  subject  gave  him  ci*edit  for  much  more  sense  and 
much  readier  elocution  than  he  really  possessed.  His 
professions  imposed  on  some  charitable  persons,  and  per- 
haps imposed  on  himself.  But  his  zeal  for  the  rights  of 
conscience  ended  with  the  predominance  of  the  Whig 
party.  When  fortune  changed,  when  he  was  no  longer 
afraid  that  others  would  persecute  him,  wdien  he  had 
it  in  his  power  to  persecute  others,  his  real  propensities 
began  to  show  themselves.  He  hated  the  Puritan 
sects  with  a  manifold  hatred,  theological  and  pohtical, 
hereditary  and  personal.  He  regarded  them  as  the 
foes  of  Heaven,  as  the  foes  of  all  legitimate  authority 
in  Church  and  State,  as  his  great  grandmother's  foes 
and  his  grandfather's,  his  father's  and  his  mother's,  his 
brother's  and  his  own.  He,  who  had  complained  so 
loudly  of  the  laws  against  Papists,  now  declared  him- 
self unable  to  conceive  how  men  could  have  the  impu- 
dence to  propose  the  repeal  of  the  laws  against  Puri- 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  86 

tans  J  He,  whose  favourite  theme  had  been  the  injus- 
tice of  requiring  civil  functionaries  to  take  rehgious 
tests,  estabhshed  in  Scotland,  when  he  resided  there  as 
Viceroy,  the  most  rigorous  religious  test  that  has  ever 
been  known  in  the  empire.^  He,  who  had  expressed 
just  indignation  wlien  the  priests  of  his  own  faith  were 
hanged  and  quartered,  amused  himself  with  hearing 
Covenanters  shriek  and  seeing  them  writhe  while 
their  knees  were  beaten  flat  in  tlie  boots.^  In  this 
mood  he  became  Kino;,  and  he  immediately  demanded 
and  obtained  from  the  obsequious  Estates  of  Scotland, 
as  the  surest  pledge  of  their  loyalty,  the  most  sangui- 
nary law  that  has  ever  in  our  islands  been  enacted 
ajjainst  Protestant  Nonconformists. 

With  this  law  the  whole  spirit  of  his  administration 
was  in  perfect  harmony.     The  fiery  persecu-  c^^g,  ^^^^. 
tion,  which  had  raged  when  he  ruled  Scotland  Sh  Cov- 
as  vicegerent,  waxed  hotter  than  ever  from  ^°''"'*"^^- 
the  day  on  which  he  became  sovereign.     Those  shires 
in  which  the  Covenanters  were  most  numerous  were 
given  up  to  the   license  of  the  army.     With  the  army 
Avas  mingled  a  militia,  composed  of  the  most  violent 
and  profligate  of  those  who  called  themselves  Episco- 
palians.    Preeminent  among  the  band  which  oppressed 
and  wasted  these  unhappy  districts  were  the  dragoons 
commanded  by   John    Graham  of  Claverhouse.     Tiie 
story  ran  that  these  wicked  men  used  in  their  revels 

1  Tlis  own  words  reported  by  himself.  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the 
Secoad,  i.  656.     Grip.  Mem. 

2  Act  Pari.  Car.  II.  Auftust  31.  1681. 

3  Burnet,  i.  583.;  Wodrow,  III.  v.  2.  Unfortunately  the  Acta  of  the 
Scottish  Privy  Council  durinjr  almost  the  whole  administration  of  the 
Duke  of  York  arc  wanting.  (1848.)  This  assertion  lias  been  met  by  a 
llirec'  :ontrailiction.  Hut  the  fact  is  exactly  as  I  have  stated  it.  There  is 
.n  tiie  acta  of  the  Scotti.sh  Privy  Council  a  hiatus  extending  from  .Vut^ust 
1678  to  August  1682.  The  Duke  of  York  began  to  reside  in  Scotland  in 
December  1G79.     He  left  Scotland,  never  to  return,  in  May  1682.     (1857.) 


86  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

to  play  at  the  torments  of  hell,  and  to  call  each  other 
by  tlie  names  of  devils  and  damned  souls. ^  The  chief 
of  this  Tophet,  a  soldier  of  distinguished  courage  and 
professional  skill,  but  rapacious  and  profane,  of  violent 
temper  and  of  obdurate  heai't,  has  left  a  name  which, 
wherever  the  Scottish  race  is  settled  on  the  face  of  the 
globe,  is  mentioned  with  a  peculiar  energy  of  hatred. 
To  recapitulate  all  the  crimes,  by  which  this  man,  and 
men  like  him,  goaded  the  peasantry  of  the  Western 
Lowlands  into  madness,  would  be  an  endless  task.  A 
lew  instances  must  suffice  ;  and  all  those  instances  shall 
be  taken  from  the  history  of  a  single  fortnight,  that 
very  fortnight  in  which  the  Scottish  Parliament,  at  the 
urgent  request  of  James,  enacted  a  new  law  of  unpre- 
cedented severity  against  Dissenters. 

John  Brown,  a  poor  carrier  of  Lanarkshire,  was,  for 
his  singular  piety,  commonly  called  the  Christian  car- 
rier. Many  years  later,  when  Scotland  enjoyed  rest, 
prosperity,  and  religious  freedom,  old  men  who  remem- 
bered the  evil  days,  described  him  as  one  versed  in 
divine  things,  blameless  in  life,  and  so  peaceable  that 
the  tyrants  could  find  no  offence  in  him  except  that  he 
absented  himself  from  the  public  Avorship  of  the  Epis- 
copalians. On  the  first  of  May  he  was  cutting  turf, 
when  he  was  seized  by  Claverhouse's  di'agoons,  rapidly 
examined,  convicted  of  nonconformity,  and  sentenced 
to  death.  It  is  said  that,  even  among  the  soldiers,  it 
was  not  easy  to  find  an  executioner.  For  the  wife  of 
the  poor  man  was  present :  she  led  one  little  child  by 
the  hand :  it  was  easy  to  see  that  she  was  about  to  give 
birth  to  another ;  and  even  those  wild  and  hardhearted 
men,  who  nicknamed  one  another  Beelzebub  and  Apol- 
lyon,  shrank  fi'om  the  great  wickedness  of  butchering 
her  husband  before    her   face.     The    prisoner,  mean- 

i   Wodrow,  III.  ix.  (J. 


i 


1«85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  87 

while,  raised  above  liimself  by  the  near  prospect  of 
eternity,  prayed  load  and  fervently  as  one  inspired, 
till  Claverhouse,  in  a  fury,  shot  him  dead.  It  was  re- 
ported by  credible  witnesses  tliat  the  widow  cried  out 
in  her  agony,  "  Well,  sir,  Avell ;  the  day  of  reckoning 
will  come  ;  "  and  that  the  murderer  replied,  "  To  man 
I  can  answer  for  what  I  have  done  ;  and  as  for  God,  I 
will  take  him  into  mine  own  hand."  Yet  it  was  ru- 
moured that  even  on  his  seared  conscience  and  ada- 
mantine heart  the  dying  ejaculations  of  his  victim 
made  an  impression  which  was  never  effaced.^ 

On  the  fifth  of  May  two  artisans,  Peter  Gillies  and 
John  Bryce,  were  tried  in  Ayrshire  by  a  military  tri- 
bunal consisting  of  fifteen  soldiers.  The  indictment  is 
still  extant.  The  prisoners  were  charged,  not  with  any 
act  of  rebellion,  but  with  holding  the  same  pernicious 
doctrines  which  had  impelled  others  to  rebel,  and  with 
wanting  only  opportunity  to  act  uj)on  those  doctrines. 
The  pi'oceeding  was  summary.  In  a  few  hours  the 
two  culprits  were  convicted,  hanged,  and  flung  together 
into  a  hole  under  the  gallows.^ 

The  eleventh  of  May  was  made  remarkable  by  more 
than  one  o-reat  crime.  Some  ngid  Calvinists  had  from 
the  doctrine  of  reprobation  drawn  the  consequence  that 
to  ])ray  for  any  person  who  had  been  predestined  to 
perdition  was  an  act  of  mutiny  against  the  eternal  de- 
crees of  the  Su])reme  Being.  Three  poor  labouring 
men,  deeply  imbued  with  this  unamiable  divinity,  were 
stopped  by  an  officer  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Glasgow. 

1  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  C.  The  editor  of  the  Oxford  edition  of  Burnet  at- 
tempts to  excuse  this  act  by  aliefjinf^  that  Claverhouse  was  then  employed 
to  intercept  all  communicatlDU  hetwecn  Arj^yle  and  Monmouth,  and  by  sup- 
posing that  John  Brown  may  have  been  detected  in  conveying  intelligence 
between  the  rebel  camps.  Unfortunately  for  this  hypothesis  John  lirown 
was  shot  on  the  first  6f  5Iay,  wlien  both  Argyle  and  Monmouth  were  in 
Holland,  and  when  there  was  no  insurrection  in  any  part  of  our  island. 

8  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  6. 


88  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

They  were  asked  whether  they  would  pray  for  King 
James  the  Seventh.  They  refused  to  do  so  except  un- 
der the  condition  that  lie  was  one  of  the  elect.  A  file 
of  musketeers  was  drawn  out.  The  prisoners  knelt 
down  :  they  were  blindfolded ;  and,  within  an  hour 
after  they  had  been  arrested,  their  blood  was  lapped  up 
by  the  dogs.^ 

While  this  was  done  in  Clydesdale,  an  act  not  less 
horrible  was  perpetrated  in  Eskdale.  One  of  the  pro- 
scribed Covenanters,  overcome  by  sickness,  had  found 
shelter  in  the  house  of  a  respectable  widow,  and  had 
died  there.  The  corpse  was  discovered  by  the  Laird 
of  Westerhall,  a  petty  tyrant  who  had,  in  the  days  of 
the  Covenant,  professed  inordinate  zeal  for  the  Presby- 
terian Church,  who  had,  since  the  Restoration,  pur- 
chased the  favour  of  the  government  by  apostasy,  and 
who  felt  towards  the  party  which  he  had  deserted  the 
implacable  hatred  of  an  apostate.  This  man  pulled 
down  the  house  of  the  poor  woman,  carried  away  her 
furniture,  and,  leaving  her  and  her  younger  children 
to  wander  in  the  fields,  dragged  her  son  Andrew,  who 
was  still  a  lad,  before  Claverhouse,  who  happened  to 
be  marching  through  that  part  of  the  country.  Cla- 
verhouse was  just  then  strangely  lenient.  Some 
thought  that  he  had  not  been  quite  himself  since  the 
death  of  the  Christian  carrier,  ten  days  before.  But 
Westerhall  was  eager  to  signalise  his  loyalty,  and  ex- 
torted a  sullen  consent.  The  guns  were  loaded,  and 
the  youth  was  told  to  pull  his  bonnet  over  his  face. 
He  refused,  and  stood  confronting  his  murderers  with 
the  Bible  in  his  hand.  "  I  can  look  you  in  the  face," 
he  said  ;  "  I  have  done  nothing  of  which  I  need  be 
ashamed.     But  how  will  you  look  in  that  day  when 

»  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  6. 


1685.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  W 

you  shall  be  jtidged  by  what  is  written  in  this  book  ?  " 
He  fell  dead,  and  was  buried  in  the  moor.^ 

On  the  same  day  two  women,  Margaret  Maclachlan 
and  Margaret  Wilson,  the  former  an  aged  widow,  the 
latter  a  maiden  of  eighteen,  suffered  death  for  their 
religion  in  Wigtonshire.  They  were  offered  their 
lives  if  they  would  consent  to  abjure  the  cause  of  the 
insurgent  Covenanters,  and  to  attend  the  Episcopal 
worship.  They  refused  ;  and  they  were  sentenced  to 
be  drowned.  They  were  carried  to  a  spot  which  the 
Solway  overflows  twice  a  day,  and  were  fastened  to 
stakes  fixed  in  the  sand,  between  high  and  low  water 
mark.  The  elder  sufferer  was  placed  near  to  the  ad- 
vancing flood,  in  the  hope  that  her  last  agonies  might 
terrify  the  younger  into  submission.  The  sight  was 
dreadful.  But  the  courage  of  the  survivor  was  sus- 
tained  by  an  enthusiasm  as  lofty  as  any  that  is  recorded 
in  martyrology.  Siie  saw  the  sea  draw  nearer  and 
nearer,  but  gave  no  sign  of  alarm.  She  prayed  and 
sang  verses  of  psalms  till  the  waves  choked  her  voice. 
After  she  had  tasted  the  bitterness  of  death  she  was, 
by  a  cruel  mercy,  unbound  and  i-estored  to  life.  When 
she  came  to  herself,  pitying  friends  and  neighbours  im- 
plored her  to  yieUl.  "  Dear  Margaret,  only  say,  God 
save  the  King  I  "  The  poor  girl,  true  to  her  stern 
theology,  gasped  out,  "  May  God  save  him,  if  it  be 
God's  will !  "  Her  friends  crowded  round  the  presid- 
ing officer.  "  She  has  said  it ;  indeed,  sir,  she  has 
said  it."  "Will  she  take  the  abjuration?"  he  de- 
manded. "•  Never  !  "  she  exclaimed.  "  I  am  Christ's  ; 
let  me  go  !  "  And  the  waters  closed  over  her  for  the 
last  time.^ 

1  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  G.     Cloud  of  Witnesses. 

2  Wodrow,   III.    ix.   G.      Tlie    epitaph    of   Margaret  Wilson,    in    the 


90  HISTOEY  OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

Thus  was  Scotland  governed  by  that  prince  whom 
ignorant  men  have  represented  as  a  friend  of  rehgious 
liberty,  whose  misfortune  it  was  to  be  too  wise  and  too 
good  for  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  Nay,  even  those 
laws  which  authorised  him  to  govern  thus  were  in  his 
judgment  reprehensibly  lenient.  While  his  officers 
were  committing  the  murders  which  have  just  been  re- 
lated, he  was  urging  the  Scottish  Parliament  to  pass  a 
new  Act  compared  with  which  all  former  Acts  might  be 
called  merciful. 

In  England  his  authority,  though  great,  was  circum- 
scribed by  ancient  and  noble  laws  which  even  the  To- 
ries would  not  patiently  have  seen  him  infringe.  Here 
he  could  not  hurry  Dissenters  before  military  tribunals, 
or  enjoy  at  Council  the  luxury  of  seeing  them  swoon 
in  the  boots.  Here  he  could  not  drown  young  girls 
for  refusing  to  take  the  abjuration,  or  shoot  poor  coun- 
trymen for  doubting  whether  he  was  one  of  the  elect. 
Yet  even  in  England  he  continued  to  persecute  the 
Puritans  as  far  as  his  power  extended,  till  events  which 
will  hereafter  be  related  induced  him  to  form  the 
design  of  uniting  Puritans  and  Papists  in  a  coalition 
for  the  humiliation  and  spoliation  of  the  Established 
Church. 

One  sect  of  Protestant  Dissenters  indeed  he,  even 
reeling  of  ^^  ^^^'^^  early  period  of  his  reign,  regarded 
wa^dsthe  "^J^^^  some  teudemess,  the  Society  of  Friends. 
Quaiijra.  jjjg  partiality  for  that  singular  fi-aternity  can- 
not be  attributed  to  religious  sympathy ;  for,  of  all  wl.o 

churchyard  at  Wigton,  is  printed  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Cloud  of  Wit- 
nesses : 

"Murdered  for  o^vTling  Christ  supreme 
Head  of  his  Church,  and  no  more  crime, 
But  her  not  o\vuhig  Prelacy, 
And  not  abjuring  Presbytery, 
Within  the  sea.  (ied  to  a  Rtake. 
She  suffered  for  Christ  Jeeus'  sake." 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  91 

acknowledffe   the  divine  mission  of  Jesus,  the  Roman 
Cathohc  and  the  Quaker  differ  most  widely.     It  may 
seem   paradoxical   to   say  that  this   veiy  circumstance 
constituted  a  tie  between  the  Roman  Catholic  and  the 
Quaker  ;  yet  such  was  really  the  case.     For  they  de- 
viated in  opposite  directions  so  far  from  what  the  great 
body  of  the  nation  regarded  as   right  that  even  liberal 
men  generally  considered  them   both  as  lying  beyond 
the  pale  of  the   largest  toleration.     Thus  the  two  ex- 
treme sects,  precisely  because  they  were  extreme  sects, 
had  a  common  interest  distinct  from  the  interest  of  the 
intermediate  sects.     The  Quakers  were  also  guiltless 
of  all  offence  against  James  and  his  House.     They  had 
not  been  in  existence  as  a  community  till  the  war  be- 
tween his  father  and  the  Long  Parliament  was  drawing 
towards  a  close.     They  had    been  cruelly  persecuted 
by  some  of  the  revolutionary  governments.     They  had, 
since  the  Restoration,  in  spite  of  much  ill  usage,  sub- 
mitted themselves  meekly  to  the  royal  authority.     For 
they  had,  though  reasoning  on  premises  which  the  An- 
glican divines  regarded  as  heterodox,  arrived,  like  the 
Ancrlican  divines,  at  the  conclusion,  that  no  excess  of 
tyranny  on  the  part  of  a  prince  can  justify  active  re- 
sistance on  the  part  of  a  subject.     No  libel  on  the  gov- 
ernment had  ever  been  traced  to  a  Quaker.^     In  no 
conspiracy  against  the  government  had  a  Quaker  been 
imphcatcd.     The  society  had  not  joined  in  the  clamour 
for  the  Exclusion  Bill,  and  had  solemnly  condemned 
the  Rye  House  Plot  as  a  hellish  design  and  a  work  of 
the  devil.2     Indeed,  the  Friends  then  took  very  little 
part  in  civil  contentions  ;  for  they  were  not,  as  now, 
congregated  in  large    towns,  but  were    generally  cu- 

»  See  the  letter  to  King  Charles  II.  prefixed  to  Barclay's  Apology. 
'  Sewel's  History  of  the  Quakers,  book  x. 


92  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  lY. 

gaged  in  agriculture,  a  pursuit  from  which  they  have 
been  gradually  driven  by  the  vexations  consequent  on 
their  strange  scruple  about  paying  tithe.  They  were, 
therefore,  far  removed  from  the  scene  of  political  strife. 
They  also,  even  in  domestic  privacy,  avoided  on  prin- 
ciple all  political  conversation.  For  such  conversation 
was,  in  their  opinion,  unfavourable  to  their  spirituality 
of  mind,  and  tended  to  disturb  the  austere  composure 
of  tlieir  deportment.  The  yearly  meetings  of  that  age 
repeatedly  admonished  the  brethren  not  to  hold  dis- 
course touching  affairs  of  state. ^  Even  within  the 
memory  of  persons  now  living  those  grave  elders  who 
retained  the  habits  of  an  earlier  generation  systemati- 
cally discouraged  such  worldly  tal'k.^  It  was  natural 
that  James  should  make  a  wide  distinction  between 
these  harmless  people  and  those  fierce  and  restless  sects 
which  considered  resistance  to  tyranny  as  a  Christian 
duty,  which  had,  in  Germany,  France,  and  Holland, 
made  war  on  legitimate  princes,  and  which  had,  during 
four  generations,  borne  peculiar  enmity  to  the  House 
of  Stuart. 

It  happened,  moreover,  that  it  was  possible  to  grant 
large  relief  to  the  Roman  Catholic  and  to  the  Quaker 
without  mitifjatino;  the  sufFerino;s  of  the  Puritan  sects. 
A  law  was  in  force  which  imposed  severe  penalties 
on  every  person  who  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  su- 
premacy when  required  to  do  so.  This  law  did  not 
affect  Presbyterians,  Independents,  or  Baptists  ;  for 
they  were  all  ready  to  call  God  to  witness  that  they 
renounced  all  spiritual  connection  with  foreign  prelates 
and  potentates.  But  the  Roman  Catholic  would  not 
swear  that  the  Pope  had  no  jurisdiction  iii  England, 

1  Minutes  of  Yearly  Meetings,  1689,  1G90. 

2  Clarkson  on  Quakerism ;  Peculiar  Customs,  chapter  v. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  98 

and  the  Quaker  would  not  swear  to  any  thing.  On 
the  other  hand,  neither  the  Roman  Cathohc  nor  the 
Quaker  was  touched  by  the  Five  Mile  Act,  which,  of 
all  the  laws  in  the  Statute  Book,  was  perhaps  the  most 
annoying  to  the  Puritan  Nonconformists. ^ 

The  Quakers  had  a  powerful  and  zealous  advocate 
at  court.  Though,  as  a  class,  they  mixed  ^imam 
little  with  the  world,  and  shunned  politics  as  ^^'^■ 
a  pursuit  dangerous  to  their  spiritual  interests,  one  of 
them,  widely  distinguished  from  the  rest  by  station  and 
fortune,  lived  in  the  highest  circles,  and  had  constant 
access  to  the  royal  ear.  This  was  the  celebrated  Wil- 
liam Penn.  His  father  had  held  great  naval  commands, 
had  been  a  Commissioner  of  the  Admiralty,  had  sate 
in  Parliament,  had  received  the  honour  of  knighthood, 
and  had  been  encouraged  to  expect  a  peerage.  The 
son  had  been  liberally  educated,  and  had  been  designed 
for  the  profession  of  arms,  but  had,  while  still  young, 
injured  his  prospects  and  disgusted  his  friends  by  join- 
ing what  was  then  generally  considered  as  a  gang  of 
crazy  heretics.  He  had  been  sent  sometimes  to  the 
Tower,  and  sometimes  to  Newgate.  He  had  been 
tried  at  the  Old  Bailey  for  preaching  in  defiance  of  the 
law.  After  a  time,  however,  he  had  been  reconciled 
to  his  family,  and  had  succeeded  in  obtaining  such 
powerful  protection  that,  while  all  the  gaols  of  Eng- 
land were  filled  with  his  brethren,  he  was  permitted, 

1  After  this  passage  was  Avritten,  I  found,  in  the  British  Museum,  a 
manuscript  (Ilarl.  JIS.  7500.)  entitled,  "An  Account  of  the  Seizures, 
Sequestrations,  great  Spoil  and  Havock  made  upon  the  Estates  of  the 
several  Protestant  Dissenters  called  Quakers,  upon  Prosecution  of  old 
Statutes  made  against  Papist  and  Popish  Recusants."  The  manuscript 
is  marked  as  having  belonged  to  James,  and  appears  to  have  been  given 
by  his  confidential  servant,  Colonel  Oraham,  to  T.ord  Oxford.  This  cir- 
cumstance appears  to  me  to  conlirm  the  view  which  I  have  taken  of  th© 
K.ing'8  conduct  towards  the  Quakers. 


94  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

during  many  years,  to  profess  his  opinions  without  mol- 
estation. Towards  the  close  of  the  late  reign  he  had 
obtained,  in  satisfaction  of  an  old  debt  due  to  him  from 
the  crown,  the  grant  of  an  immense  region  in  North 
America.  In  this  tract,  then  peopled  only  by  Indian 
hunters,  he  had  invited  his  persecuted  friends  to  settle. 
His  colony  was  still  in  its  infancy  when  James  mounted 
the  throne. 

Between  James  and  Penn  there  had  long  been  a 
familiar  acquaintance.  The  Quaker  now  became  a 
corn-tier,  and  almost  a  favourite.  He  was  every  day 
summoned  from  the  gallery  into  the  closet,  and  some- 
times had  long  audiences  while  peers  were  kept  wait- 
ing in  the  antechambers.  It  was  noised  abroad  that 
he  had  more  real  power  to  help  and  hurt  than  many 
nobles  who  filled  high  offices.  He  was  soon  surrounded, 
by  flatterers  and  suppliants.  His  house  at  Kensing- 
ton was  sometimes  thronged,  at  his  hour  of  rising,  by 
more  than  two  hundred  suitors.  He  paid  dear,  how- 
ever, for  this  seeming  prosperity.  Even  his  own  sect 
looked  coldly  on  liim,  and  requited  his  services  with 
obloquy.  He  was  loudly  accused  of  being  a  Papist, 
nay,  a  Jesuit.  Some  affirmed  that  he  had  been  edu- 
cated at  St.  Omers,  and  others,  that  he  had  been  or- 
dained at  Rome.  These  calumnies,  indeed,  could  find 
credit  only  with  the  undiscerning  multitude  :  but  vvitli 
these  calumnies  were  mingled  accusations  much  better 
founded.^ 


1  Penn's  visits  to  Whitehall,  and  levees  at  Kensington,  are  described 
with  great  vivacity,  though  in  very  bad  Latin,  by  Gerard  Croese.  "  Sunie- 
bat,"  he  says,  "  rex  ssepe  secretum,  non  horarium,  vero  horarum  pluriiim, 
in  quo  de  variis  rebus  cum  Penno  serio  serinonem  conferebat,  et  interim 
ditierebat  audire  pnccipuorum  nobilium  ordinem,  qui  hoc  interim  spatio 
in  proctt'toue,  in  proximo,  regem  conventum  prassto  erant."  Of  the 
crowd  of  suitors  at  Penn's  house,  Croese  says,  "  Vidi  quandoque  de  hoc 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  96 

To  speak  the  whole  truth  concerning  Penn  is  a  task 
which  requires  some  courage  ;  for  he  is  rather  a  mythi- 
cal than  a  historical  person.  Rival  nations  and  hostile 
sects  have  agreed  in  canonizing  him.  England  is  proud 
of  his  name.  A  great  commonwealth  beyond  the  At- 
lantic regards  him  with  a  reverence  similar  to  that 
which  the  Athenians  felt  for  Theseus,  and  the  Romans 
for  Quirinus.  The  respectable  society  of  which  he  was 
a  member  honours  him  as  an  apostle.  By  pious  men  of 
other  persuasions  he  is  generally  regarded  as  a  bright 
pattern  of  Christian  virtue.  Meanwhile  admirers  of  a 
very  different  sort  have  sounded  his  praises.  The 
French  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century  par- 
doned what  they  regarded  as  his  superstitious  fancies 
in  consideration  of  his  contempt  for  priests,  and  of  his 
cosmopolitan  benevolence,  impartially  extended  to  all 
races  and  to  all  creeds.  His  name  has  thus  become, 
throughout  all  civilised  countries,  a  synonyme  for 
probity  and  philanthropy. 

Nor  is  this  high  reputation  altogether  unmerited. 
Penn  was  without  doubt  a  man  of  eminent  virtues. 
He  had  a  strong  sense  of  religious  duty  and  a  fervent 
desire  to  promote  the  happiness  of  maidvind.  On  one 
or  two  points  of  high  importance  he  had  notions  more 
correct  than  were,  in  his  day,  common  even  among 
men  of  enlarged  minds ;  and,  as  the  proprietor  and  leg- 
islator of  a  province  which,  being  almost  uninhabited 
when  it  came  into  his  possession,  afforded  a  clear  field 
for  moral  experiments,  he  had  the  I'are  good  fortune  of 
being  able  to  carry  his  theories  into  practice  without 
any  compromise,  and  yet  without  any  shock  to  existing 
institutions.    He  will  always  be  mentioned  with  honour 

genere  hominura  non  minus  bis  centum."  —  Historia  Quakeriana,  lib    iL 
1695. 

VOL.  u.  7 


96  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

as  a  founder  of  a  colony,  who  did  not,  in  his  dealings 
with  a  savage  people,  abuse  the  strength  derived  from 
civilisation,  and  as  a  lawgiver  who,  in  an  age  of  perse- 
cution, made  religious  liberty  the  corner  stone  of  a 
polity.  But  his  writings  and  his  life  fui'nish  abundant 
proofs  that  he  was  not  a  man  of  strong  sense.  He  had 
no  skill  in  reading  the  characters  of  others.  His  confi- 
dence in  persons  less  virtuous  than  himself  led  him  into 
great  errors  and  misfortunes.  His  enthusiasm  for  one 
great  principle  sometimes  impelled  him  to  violate  other 
great  principles  which  he  ought  to  have  held  sacred. 
Nor  was  his  rectitude  altogether  proof  against  the 
temjDtations  to  which  it  was  exposed  in  that  splendid 
and  polite,  but  deeply  corrupted  society,  with  which 
he  now  ming;led.  The  whole  court  was  in  a  ferment 
with  intrigues  of  gallantry  and  intrigues  of  ambition. 
The  traffic  in  honours,  places,  and  pardons  was  inces- 
sant. It  was  natural  that  a  man  who  was  daily  seen  at 
the  palace,  and  who  was  known  to  have  free  access  to 
majesty,  should  be  frequently  importuned  to  use  his 
influence  for  purposes  which  a  rigid  morality  must  con- 
demn. The  integrity  of  Penn  had  stood  firm  against 
obloquy  and  persecution.  But  now,  attacked  by  royal 
smiles,  by  female  blandishments,  by  the  insinuating 
eloquence  and  delicate  flattery  of  veteran  diplomatists 
and  courtiers,  his  resolution  began  to  give  way.  Titles 
and  phrases  against  which  he  had  often  borne  his  .tes- 
timony dropped  occasionally  from  his  lips  and  his  pen. 
It  would  be  well  if  he  had  been  guilty  of  nothing  worse 
than  such  compliances  with  the  fashions  of  the  world. 
Unhappily  it  cannot  be  concealed  that  he  bore  a  chief 
part  in  some  transactions  condemned,  not  merely  by 
the  rigid  code  of  the  society  to  which  he  belonged,  but 
by  the   general  sense  of  all  honest  men.     He  after- 


favour 
shown  to 
Roman 
Catholics 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  97 

wards  solemnly  protested  that  his  hands  were  pure 
from  illicit  gain,  and  that  he  had  never  received  any 
gratuity  ft'om  those  whom  he  had  obliged,  though  he 
might  easily,  while  his  influence  at  court  lasted,  have 
made  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  pounds.^  To 
this  assertion  frill  credit  is  due.  But  bribes  may  be 
offered  to  vanity  as  well  as  to  cupidity ;  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  deny  that  Penn  was  cajoled  into  bearing  a  part 
in  some  unjustifiable  transactions  of  which  others  en- 
joyed the  profits. 

The  first  use  which  he  made  of  his  credit  was  highly 
commendable.  He  strongly  represented  the  pep^,;, 
sufferincrs  of  his  brethren  to  the  new  Kinir, 
who  saw  with  pleasure  that  it  was  possible  to 
grant  indulgence  to  these  quiet  sectaries  and  to  '^"'i ^''"•'•^ri:- 
the  Roman  Catholics,  without  showing  similar  favour  to 
other  classes  which  were  then  under  persecution.  A 
list  was  framed  of  prisoners  against  whom  proceedings 
had  been  instituted  for  not  taking  the  oaths,  or  for  not 
going  to  church,  and  of  whose  loyalty  certificates  had 
been  produced  to  the  government.  These  persons  were 
discharged,  and  orders  were  given  that  no  similar  pro- 
ceeding should  be  instituted  till  the  royal  pleasure  should 
be  further  signified.  In  this  way  about  fifteen  hundred 
Quakers,  and  a  still  greater  number  of  Roman  Catho- 
lics, regained  their  liberty.^ 

1  "  Twenty  thousand  into  my  pocket;  and  a  hundred  thousand  into  my 
province."  —  Penn's  Letter  to  Popple. 

■■^  '{"hose  orders,  sii^nod  by  Sunderland,  will  ho  found  in  Scwel's  History. 
They  hear  date  April  18.  1085.  They  arc  written  in  a  style  singularly  ob- 
scure and  intricate;  but  I  think  that  I  have  exhibited  the  meaning  cor- 
rectly. I  have  not  been  able  to  find  any  proof  tliat  any  person,  not  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  or  a  Quaker,  rogaincMl  his  freedom  under  those  orders.  See 
Neal's  llistorv'  of  the  Puritans,  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  (Jerard  Croeso,  lib.  ii. 
Croese  eUimates  the  number  of  (iuakcrs  liberated  at  fourteen  hundred  and 
wxty. 


98  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

And  now  the  time  had  arrived  when  the  Enghsh 
ParHament  was  to  meet.  The  members  of  the  House 
of  Commons  who  had  repaired  to  the  capital  were  so 
numerous  that  there  was  much  doubt  whether  their 
cliamber,  as  it  was  tlien  fitted  up,  would  afford  suffi- 
cient accommodation  for  them.  They  employed  the 
days  which  immediately  preceded  the  opening  of  the 
session  in  talking  over  public  affairs  with  each  other 
and  with  the  agents  of  the  government.  A  great 
meeting  of  the  loyal  party  was  held  at  the  Fountain 
Tavern  in  the  Strand ;  and  Roger  Lestrange,  who  had 
recently  been  knighted  by  the  King,  and  returned  to 
Parliament  by  the  city  of  Winchester,  took  a  leading 
part  in  their  consultations  .^ 

It  soon  appeared  that  a  large  portion  of  the  Com- 
mons had  views  which  did  not  altogether  agree  with 
those  of  the  Court.  The  Tory  country  gentlemen 
were,  with  scarcely  one  exception,  desirous  to  maintain 
the  Test  Act  and  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act ;  and  some 
among  them  talked  of  voting  the  revenue  only  for  a 
term  of  years.  But  they  were  perfectly  ready  to 
enact  severe  laws  against  the  Whigs,  and  would  gladly 
have  seen  all  the  supporters  of  the  Exclusion  Bill  made 
incapable  of  holding  office.  The  King,  on  the  other 
hand,  desired  to  obtain  from  the  Parliament  a  revenue 
for  life,  the  admission  of  Roman  Catholics  to  office,  and 
the  repeal  of  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act.  On  these  three 
objects  his  heai't  was  set ;  and  he  was  by  no  means  dis- 
posed to  accept  as  a  substitute  for  them  a  penal  law 
against  Exclusionists.  Such  a  law,  indeed,  would  have 
been  positively  unpleasing  to  him ;  for  one  class  of 
Exclusionists  stood  high    in  his   favour,  that  class  of 

1  Barillon,  ^j^^  1685.     Observator,  May  27.  1G35;   Sir  J.  ReresDy's 
Memoirs. 


J 


I 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  99 

which  Sunderland  was  the  representative,  that  class 
which  had  joined  the  Whigs  in  the  days  of  the  plot, 
merely  because  the  Whigs  were  predominant,  and 
which  had  changed  with  the  change  of  fortune.  James 
justly  regarded  these  renegades  as  the  most  serviceable 
tools  that  he  could  employ.  It  was  not  from  the  stout- 
hearted Cavaliers,  who  had  been  true  to  him  in  his 
adversity,  that  he  could  expect  abject  and  unscrupulous 
obedience  in  his  prosperity.  The  men  who,  impelled 
not  by  zeal  for  liberty  or  for  religion,  but  merely  by 
selfish  cupidity  and  selfish  fear,  had  assisted  to  oppress 
him  when  he  was  weak,  were  the  very  men  who,  im- 
pelled by  the  same  cupidity  and  the  same  fear,  would 
assist  him  to  oppress  his  people  now  that  he  was 
strong.^  Though  vindictive,  he  was  not  mdiscrimi- 
nately  vindictive.  Not  a  single  instance  can  be  men- 
tioned in  which  he  showed  a  generous  compassion  to 
those  who  had  opposed  him  honestly  and  on  public 
grounds.  But  he  frequently  spared  and  promoted 
those  whom  some  vile  motive  had  induced  to  injure 
him.  For  that  meanness  which  marked  them  out  as  fit 
implements  of  tyranny  was  so  precious  in  his  estimation 
that  he  reijarded  it  with  some  indulgence  even  when 
it  was  exhibited  at  his  own  expense. 

The  King's  wishes  were  communicated  through  sev- 
eral channels  to  the  Tory  members  of  the  Lower 
House.  The  majority  was  easily  persuaded  to  forego 
all  thoughts  of  a  penal  law  against  the  Exclusionists, 
and  to  consent  that  his  majesty  should  have  the  rev- 
enue for  life.     15ut  about  the  Test  Act  and  the  Habeas 

1  Lewis  wrote  to  ISarillon  aliout  this  class  of  Exclusionists  as  follows: 
■'  L'intiTet  qiiMls  aiiTout  ;i  cfi'acer  cette  fache  par  dcs  services  considi'rables 
les  portcra,  kcIoii  loiitcs  Ics  ajipan'rifes,  ii  le  servir  plus  utiloment  que  ne 
pourroient  faire  ceux  qui  oul  toujours  <?t(j  les  plus  attaches  k  sa  personue." 
May  ^.  1G85. 


100  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV 

Corpus  Act,  the  emissaries  of  the  court  could  obtain  n' 
satisfactory  assurances.^ 

On  the  nineteenth  of  May  the  session  was  opened. 
Meeting  of     The  beuches  of  the  Commons   presented  a 

the  English         .  '■ 

Parliament,  suigular  spcctacle.  That  great  party  which, 
in  the  last  three  Parliaments,  had  been  predominant, 
had  now  dwindled  to  a  pitiable  minority,  and  was  in- 
deed little  more  than  a  fifteenth  part  of  the  House. 
Of  the  five  hundred  and  thirteen  knights  and  burgesses 
only  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  had  ever  sate  in  that 
place  before.  It  is  evident  that  a  body  of  men  so  raw 
and  inexperienced  must  have  been,  in  some  impor 
tant  qualities,  far  below  the  average  of  our  representa- 
tive assemblies.^ 

The  management  of  the  House  was  confided  by 
James  to  two  peers  of  the  kingdom  of  Scotland.  One 
of  them,  Charles  Middleton,  Earl  of  Middleton,  after 
holding  high  office  at  Edinburgh,  had,  shortly  before 
the  death  of  the  late  King,  been  sworn  of  the  English 
Privy  Council,  and  appointed  one  of  the  Secretaries  of 
State.  With  him  was  joined  Richard  Graham,  Vis- 
count Preston,  who  had  long  held  the  post  of  Envoy  at 
Versailles. 

The  first  business  of  the  Commons  was  to  elect  a 
Trevor  chosen  Sp®^^^^-  Who  should  be  the  mau,  was  a 
speaker.  question  which  had  been  much  debated  in 
the  cabinet.  Guildford  had  recommended  Sir  Thomas 
Mei'es,  who,  like  himself,  ranked  among  the  Trimmers. 
Jeffreys,  who  missed  no  opportunity  of  crossing  the 
Lord  Keeper,  had  pressed  the  claims  of  Sir  John 
Trevor.  Trevor  had  been  bred  half  a  pettifogger  and 
half  a  gambler,  had  brought  to  political  life  sentiments 

1  Barillon,  May  ^\.  1685 ;  Sir  John  Reresby's  Memoirs. 

2  Bumet,  i.  626. ;  Evelyn's  Diary,  May  22.  1685. 


1886.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  101 

and  principles  wortliy  of  both  his  calhngs,  had  become 
a  parasite  of  the  Chief  Justice,  and  could,  on  occasion, 
imitate,  not  unsuccessfully,  the  vituperative  style  of  his 
patron.  The  minion  of  Jeffreys  was,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  preferred  by  James,  was  proposed  by 
Middleton,  and  was  chosen  without  opposition.^ 

Thus  far  all  went  smoothly.  But  an  adversary  of 
no  common  prowess  was  watching  his  time,  character  of 
This  was  Edward  Seymour  of  Berry  Pome-  ^'^•^"*°"'^- 
roy  Castle,  member  for  the  city  of  Exeter.  Seymour's 
birth  put  him  on  a  level  Avith  the  noblest  subjects  in 
Europe.  He  was  the  right  heir  male  of  the  body  of 
that  Duke  of  Somerset  who  had  been  brother  in  law 
of  King  Henry  the  Eighth,  and  Protector  of  the  realm 
of  England.  In  the  limitation  of  the  dukedom  of 
Somerset,  the  elder  son  of  the  Protector  had  been 
postponed  to  the  younger  son.  From  the  younger 
son  the  Dukes  of  Somerset  were  descended.  From 
the  elder  son  was  descended  the  family  which  dwelt 
at  Berry  Pomeroy.  Seymour's  fortune  was  large,  and 
his  influence  in  the  west  of  England  extensive.  Nor 
was  the  importance  derived  from  descent  and  wealth 
the  only  importance  which  belonged  to  him.  He  was 
one  of  the  most  skilful  debaters  and  men  of  business 
in  the  kingdom.  He  had  sate  many  years  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  had  studied  all  its  rules  and 
usages,  and  thoroughly  understood  its  peculiar  temper. 
He  had  been  elected  Speaker  in  the  late  reign  under 
circumstances  which  made  that  distinction  peculiarly 
honourable.  Durins  several  iiencrations  none  but 
lawyers  had  been  called  to  the  chair ;  and  he  was  the 
first  country  gentleman  whose  abiHties  and  acquii-e- 
luents  enabled  him  to  break  that  long  prescription. 
>  Roger  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  218. ;  Bramston's  Memoirs. 


102  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Gh.  IV. 

He  had  subsequently  held  high  political  office,  and  had 
sate  in  the  cabinet.  But  his  haughty  and  unaccom- 
modating temper  had  given  so  much  disgust  that  he 
had  been  forced  to  retire.  He  was  a  Tory  and  a 
Churchman ;  he  had  strenuously  opposed  the  Exclu- 
sion Bill ;  he  had  been  persecuted  by  the  Whigs  in 
the  dav  of  their  prosperity  ;  and  he  could  therefore 
safely  venture  to  hold  language  for  which  any  person 
suspected  of  republicanism  would  have  been  sent  to 
the  Tower.  He  had  long  been  at  the  head  of  a 
strong  parliamentary  connection,  which  was  called 
the  Western  Alliance,  and  which  included  many  gen- 
tlemen of  Devonshire,  Somersetshire,  and  Cornwall.^ 

In  every  House  of  Commons  a  member,  who  unites 
eloquence,  knowledge,  and  habits  of  business,  to  opu- 
lence and  illustrious  descent,  must  be  highly  consid- 
ered. But  in  a  House  of  Commons  from  which  many 
of  the  eminent  orators  and  parliamentary  tacticians  of 
the  age  were  excluded,  and  which  was  crowded  with 
people  who  had  never  heard  a  debate,  the  influence 
of  such  a  man  was  peculiarly  formidable.  Weight 
of  moral  character  was  indeed  wanting  to  Edward 
Seymour.  He  was  licentious,  profane,  corrupt,  too 
proud  to  behave  with  common  politeness,  yet  not  too 
proud  to  pocket  illicit  gain.  But  he  was  so  useful 
an  ally,  and  so  mischievous  an  enemy,  that  he  was 
frequently  courted  even  by  those  who  most  detested 
him.2 

He  was  now  in  bad  humour  with  the  government. 
His  interest  had  been  weakened  in  some  places  by 
the   remodelling  of  the   western  boroughs  :  his  piiJe 

1  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  228. ;  News  from  Westminster. 

2  Burnet,  i.  382. ;  Letter  from  Lord  Conway  to  Sir  George  Rawdon,  Dec 
28.  1677,  in  tlio  Uawdoii  Papers. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  103 

had  been  wounded  by  the  elevation  of  Trevor  to  the 
chair ;  and  he  took  an  early  opportunity  of  revenging 
himself. 

On  the  twenty-second  of  May  the  Commons  were 
summoned  to  the  bar  of  the  Lords  ;  and  the   ^he  King's 
King,  seated  on  his  throne,  made  a  speech  to  tht^aruk- 
both  Houses.     He  declared  himself  resolved  """"'• 
to  maintain  the  established  government  in  Church  and 
State.     But  he  weakened  the  effect  of  this  declaration 
by  addressing  an  extraordinary  admonition  to  the  Com- 
mons.    He  was  apprehensive,  he  said,  that  they  might 
be  inclined   to  dole  out  money  to  him,  from  time  to 
time,  in  the  hope  that  they  should  thus  force  him  to 
call    them    frecjuently  together.     But   he    must    warn 
them  that  he  was  not  to  be  so  dealt  with,  and  that,  if 
they  wished  him  to  meet  them  often,  they  must  use 
him  well.     As  it  was  evident  that  without  money  the 
government  could  not  be  carried  on,  these  expressions 
plainly  implied  that,  if  they  did  not  give  him  as  much 
money  as  he  wished,  he  would  take    it.     Strange  to 
say,  this  harangue  was  received  with  loud  cheers  by 
the  Tory  gentlemen    at  the  bar.     Such  acclamations 
were    then    usual.     It   has    now    been,  during   many 
years,  the    grave   and  decorous  usage  of  Parliaments 
to   hear,  in  respectful  silence,  all  expressions,  accept- 
able   or   unacceptable,    which   are   uttered   from    the 
throne.^ 

It  was  then  the  custom  that,  after  the  King  had  con- 
cisely explained  his  reasons  for  calling  Parliament  to 
e-ether,  tiie  minister  who  held  the  Great  Seal  should, 
at  more  length,  explain  to  the  Houses  the  state  of 
public  affairs.  Guildford,  in  imitation  of  his  predeces- 
sors, Clarendon,  Bridgeman,  Sliafteshui-y,  and  Notting- 

»  London  Gazette,  May  25.  1085 ;  Evelyn's  Diary,  May  22.  1685 


104  HISTORY  OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

ham,  had  prepared  an  elaborate  oration,  but  found,  to 
his  great  mortification,  that  his  services  wei'e  not 
wanted.-'^ 

As  soon  as  the  Commons  had  returned  to  their  own 
Debate  in  the  chamber,  it  was  proposed  that  they  should 
Commons,  pesolve  themsclvcs  into  a  Committee,  for  the 
purpose  of  settling  a  revenue  on  the  King. 

Then  Seymour   stood  up.     How  he  stood,  looking 
Speech  of       lik®  what  he  was,  the  chief  of  a  dissolute  and 
Seymour.       \i\g\i  spirited  gentry,  with  the  artificial  ring- 
lets clustering  in  fashionable  profusion  round  his  shoul- 
ders, and  a  mingled  expression  of  voluptuousness  and 
disdain  in  his  eye  and  on  his  lip,  the  likenesses  of  him 
which  still  remain  enable  us  to  imagine.     It  was  not, 
the   haughty  Cavalier  said,  his  wish  that  the  Parlia- 
ment should  withhold  from  the  crown  the  means   of 
carrying  on  the  government.     But  was  there  indeed 
a  Parliament  ?     Were  there  not  on  the  benches  many 
men  who  had,  as  all  the  world  knew,  no  right  to  sit 
there,  many  men  whose  elections  were  tainted  by  cor- 
ruption, many  men  forced  by  intimidation  on  reluctant 
voters,  and  many  men  returned  by  corporations  which 
had  no  legal  existence  ?     Had  not  constituent  bodies 
been  remodelled,  in  defiance  of  royal  charters  and  of 
immemorial  prescription  ?     Had  not  returning  officers 
been  everywhere  the  unscrupulous  agents  of  the  Court  ? 
Seeing  that  the  very  principle  of  representation  had 
been  thus  systematically  attacked,  he  knew  not  how 
to  call  the  throng  of  gentlemen  which  he  saw  around 
him  by  the  honourable  name  of  a  House  of  Commons. 
Yet  never  was  there  a  time  when  it  more  concerned 
the  public  weal  that  the  character  of  the  Parliament 
should  stand  high.     Great  dangers  impended  over  the 
1  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  256. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  106 

ecclesiastical  and  civil  constitution  of  the  realm.  It 
was  matter  of  vulgar  notoriety,  it  Avas  matter  which 
required  no  proof,  that  the  Test  Act,  the  rampart  of 
reHgion,  and  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  the  rampart  of 
liberty,  were  marked  out  for  destruction.  "  Before 
we  proceed  to  legislate  on  questions  so  momentous,  let 
us  at  least  ascertain  whether  we  really  are  a  legisla- 
ture. Let  our  first  proceeding  be  to  inquire  into  the 
manner  in  which  the  elections  have  been  conducted. 
And  let  us  look  to  it  that  the  inquiry  be  impartial. 
For,  if  the  nation  sliall  find  that  no  redress  is  to  be 
obtained  by  peaceful  methods,  we  may  perhaps  ere 
long  suffer  the  justice  which  we  refuse  to  do."  He 
concluded  by  moving  that,  before  any  supply  was 
<i-ranted,  the  House  would  take  into  consideration 
petitions  against  returns,  and  that  no  member  whose 
right  to  sit  was  disputed  should  be  allowed  to 
vote. 

Not  a  cheer  was  heard.  Not  a  member  ventured  to 
second  the  motion.  Indeed,  Seymour  had  said  much 
that  no  other  man  could  have  said  with  impunity.  The 
proposition  fell  to  the  ground,  and  was  not  even  entered 
on  the  journals.  But  a  mighty  effect  had  been  pro- 
duced. Barillon  informed  his  master  that  many  who 
had  not  dared  to  applaud  that  remarkable  speech  had 
cordially  approved  of  it,  that  it  was  the  universal  sub- 
ject of  conversation  throughout  London,  and  that  the 
impression  made  on  the  public  mind  seemed  likely  to 
be  durable.^ 

The  Commons  went  into  committee  Avithout  delay, 

1  Burnet,  i.  639.;  Evelyn's  Diarj',  May  22.  1G85;  Barillon,  j'j'n'.V -^"^ 
.^^^  ^'  1685.  The  silence  of  the  journals  perplexed  Mr.  Fox:  but  it 
is  explained  by  the  circumstance  that  Seymour's  motion  was  not 
onded. 


106  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

The  Revenue  ^^^  votecl  to  the  Kiiig,  for  life,  the  whole 
voted.  revenue  enjoyed  by  his  brother.^ 

The  zealous  churchmen  who  formed  the  majority  of 
Proceedings    the  Housc  sccm  to  havc  been  of  opinion  that 

of  the  Com-  .        ,  •   i  i  •    i         i  i       i 

mens  con-  the  promptitude  with  which  tiiey  liad  met 
ligion.  the    wish    of  James,  touching   the  revenue, 

entitled  them  to  expect  some  concession  on  his  part. 
They  said  that  much  had  been  done  to  gratify  him, 
and  that  they  must  now  do  something  to  gratify  the 
nation.  The  House,  therefore,  resolved  itself  into  a 
Committee  of  Religion,  in  order  to  consider  the  best 
means  of  providing  for  the  security  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical establishment.  In  that  Committee  two  resolutions 
were  unanimously  adopted.  The  first  expressed  fer- 
vent attachment  to  the  Church  of  England.  The  sec- 
ond called  on  the  King  to  put  in  execution  the  penal 
laws  against  all  persons  who  were  not  members  of  that 
Church.2 

The  Whigs  would  doubtless  have  wished  to  see  the 
Protestant  dissenters  tolerated,  and  the  Roman  Cath- 
'  dies  alone  persecuted.  But  the  Whigs  were  a  small 
and  a  disheartened  minority.  They  therefore  kept 
themselves  as  much  as  possible  ovit  of  sight,  dropped 
their  party  name,  abstained  from  obtruding  their  pe- 
culiar opinions  on  a  hostile  audience,  and  steadily  sup- 
ported every  proposition  tending  to  disturb  the  harmony 
which  as  yet  subsisted  between  the  Parliament  and  the 
Court. 

When  the  proceedings  of  the  Committee  of  Religion 
were  known  at  Whitehall,  the  King's  anger  was  great. 
Nor  can  we  justly  blame  him  for  resenting  the  conduct 
of  the  Tories.     If  they  were  disposed  to  require  the 

1  Journals,  May  22.     Stat.  Jac.  II.  i.  1. 

2  Journals,  May  26,  27.     Sir  J.  Reresby's  Memoirs. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  107 

rigorous  execution  of  the  peual  code,  they  clearly  ought 
to  have  supported  the  Exclusion  Bill.  For  to  place  a 
Papist  on  the  throne,  and  then  to  insist  on  his  perse- 
cutine:  to  the  death  the  teachers  of  that  faith  in  which 
alone,  on  his  principles,  salvation  could  be  found,  was 
monstrous.  In  mitigating  by  a  lenient  administration 
the  severity  of  the  bloody  laws  of  Elizabeth,  the  King 
violated  no  constitutional  principle.  He  only  exerted 
a  power  which  has  always  belonged  to  the  crown. 
Nay,  he  only  did  what  Avas  afterwards  done  by  a  suc- 
cession of  sovereigns  zealous  for  Protestantism,  by  Wil- 
liam, by  Anne,  and  by  the  princes  of  the  House  of 
Brunswick.  Had  he  suffered  Roman  Catholic  priests, 
whose  lives  he  could  save  without  infringing  any  law, 
to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered,  for  discharging 
what  he  considered  as  their  first  duty,  he  would  have 
drawn  on  himself  the  hatred  and  contempt  even  of 
those  to  whose  prejudices  he  had  made  so  shameful  a 
concession  ;  and  had  he  contented  himself  with  grant- 
ing to  the  members  of  his  own  Church  a  practical  tol- 
eration by  a  large  exercise  of  his  unquestioned  pre- 
rogative of  mercy,  posterity  would  have  unanimously 
applauded  him. 

The  Commons  probably  felt  on  reflection  that  they 
had  acted  absuixlly.  They  were  also  disturbed  by 
learning  that  the  King,  to  whom  they  looked  up  with 
suj)erstitious  reverence,  was  greatly  provoked.  They 
made  haste,  therefore,  to  atone  for  their  offence.  In 
the  House  they  unanimously  reversed  the  decision 
which  in  the  Connnittee  they  had  unanimously  adopted, 
and  passed  a  resolution  importing  that  they  relied  with 
entire  confidence  on  His  Majesty's  gracious  promise  to 
protect  that  religion  which  was  dearer  to  them  than  life 

itself.i 

1  Commons'  Journals,  May  27.  1G85. 


i.08  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  IV. 

Three  days  later  the  King  informed  the  House  that 
AfWifionai  ^lis  brother  had  left  some  debts,  and  that  the 
Saxes  Toted.  g^Qj-gg  ^f  ^]^q  navj  and  ordnance  were  nearly- 
exhausted.  It  was  promptly  resolved  that  new  taxes 
should  be  imposed.  The  person  on  Avhom  devolved 
the  task  of  devising  ways  and  means  was  Sir  Dudley 
Sir  Dudley  North,  yoimger  brother  of  the  Lord  Keeper. 
North.  Dudley  North  was  one  of  the  ablest  men  of 

his  time.  He  had  early  in  life  been  sent  to  the  Levant, 
and  had  there  been  long  engaged  in  mercantile  pursuits. 
Most  men  would,  in  such  a  situation,  have  allowed  their 
faculties  to  rust  For  at  Smyrna  and  Constantinople 
there  were  few  books  and  few  intelligent  companions. 
But  the  young  factor  had  one  of  those  vigorous  under- 
standings which  are  independent  of  external  aids.  In 
his  solitude  he  meditated  deeply  on  the  philosophy  of 
trade,  and  thought  out  by  degrees  a  complete  and  ad- 
mirable theory,  substantially  the  same  Avith  that  which, 
a  hundred  years  later,  was  expounded  by  Adam  Smith. 
After  an  exile  of  many  years,  Dudley  North  returned 
to  England  with  a  large  fortune,  and  commenced  busi- 
ness as  a  Turkey  merchant  in  the  City  of  London. 
His  profound  knowledge,  both  speculative  and  practical, 
of  commercial  matters,  and  the  perspicuity  and  liveli- 
ness with  which  he  explained  his  views,  speedily  intro- 
duced him  to  the  notice  of  statesmen.  The  government 
found  in  him  at  once  an  enlightened  adviser  and  an 
unscrupulous  slave.  For  with  his  rare  mental  endow- 
ments were  joined  lax  principles  and  an  unfeeling  heart. 
When  the  Tory  reaction  was  in  full  progress,  he  had 
consented  to  be  made  Sheriff  for  the  express  purj^ose 
of  assisting  the  vengeance  of  the  court.  His  juries 
had  never  failed  to  find  verdicts  of  Guilty ;  and,  on  a 
day  of  judicial  butchery,  carts,  loaded  with  the  legs 


l«86.]  JAMES   THE  SECOND.  101> 

and  arms  of  quartered  Whigs,  were,  to  the  great  dis- 
composure of  liis  lady,  driven  to  his  fine  house  in  Bas- 
inshall  Street  for  orders.  His  services  had  been  re- 
warded  with  the  honour  of  lenighthood,  with  an  Alder- 
man's gown,  and  with  the  office  of  Counnissioner  of  the 
Customs.  He  had  been  brought  into  Parliament  for 
Banbury,  and,  though  a  new  member,  was  the  person 
on  whom  the  Lord  Treasurer  chiefly  relied  for  the  con- 
duct of  financial  business  in  the  Lower  House. ^ 

Thou2:h  the  Commons  were  unanimous  in  their  res- 
olution  to  grant  a  further  supply  to  the  crown,  they 
were  by  no  means  agreed  as  to  the  sources  from  which 
that  supply  should  be  drawn.  It  was  speedily  deter- 
mined that  part  of  the  sum  which  was  required  should 
be  raised  by  laying  an  additional  impost,  for  a  term  of 
eight  years,  on  wine  and  vinegar :  but  something  more 
than  this  was  needed.  Several  absurd  schemes  were 
suggested.  Many  country  gentlemen  were  disposed  to 
put  a  heavy  tax  on  all  new  buildings  in  the  capital. 
Such  a  tax,  it  was  lu)])ed,  would  check  the  growth  of 
a  city  which  had  long  been  regarded  with  jealousy 
and  aversion  by  the  rural  ai'istocracy.  Dudley  North's 
plan  Avas  that  additional  duties  should  be  imposed,  for 
a  term  of  eight  years,  on  sugar  and  tobacco.  A  great 
clamour  was  raised.  Colonial  merchants,  grocers, 
sugar  bakers  and  tobacconists,  petitioned  the  House 
and  besieged  the  public  offices.  The  people  of  Bristol, 
who  were  deeply  iiiterested  in  the  trade  with  Virginia 
and  Jamaica,  sent  up  a  deputation  which  was  heard  at 
the  bar  of  the  Commons.  Rochester  was  for  a  mo- 
-Tient  staggered  ;  but  North's  ready  wit  and  perfect 
knowledge  of  trade  prevailed,  both    in  the  Treasury 

1  Roger  North's  Life  of  Sir  Dudley  North;  Life  of  Lord  Guildford,  166.; 
Mr.  M'Ciilloch's  Literature  of  Politiwtl  Mcouomy. 


110  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.'  [Ch.  IV. 

and  in  the  Parliament,  against  all  opposition.  The  old 
members  were  amazed  at  seeing  a  man  who  had  not 
been  a  fortnight  in  the  House,  and  whose  life  had  been 
chiefly  passed  in  foreign  countries,  assume  with  confi- 
dence, and  discharge  with  ability,  all  the  functions  of  a 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.^ 

His  plan  was  adopted  ;  and  thus  the  crown  was  in 
possession  of  a  clear  income  of  about  nineteen  hundred 
thousand  pounds,  derived  from  England  alone.  Such 
an  income  was  then  more  than  sufficient  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  government  in  time  of  peace.^ 

The  Lords  had,  in  the  meantime,  discussed  several 
Proceedings  important  questions.  The  Tory  party  had 
of  the  Lords,  always  been  strong  among  the  peers.  It  in- 
cluded the  whole  bench  of  Bishops,  and  had  been  rein- 
forced, during  the  four  years  which  had  elapsed  since 
the  last  dissolution,  by  several  fresh  creations.  Of  the 
new  nobles,  the  most  conspicuous  were  the  Lord  Treas- 
urer Rochester,  the  Lord  Keeper  Guildford,  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  Jeffreys,  the  Loi-d  Godolphin,  and  the 
Lord  Churchill,  who,  after  his  return  from  Versailles, 
had  been  made  a  baron  of  England. 

The  peers  early  took  into  consideration  the  case  of 
four  members  of  their  body  who  had  been  impeached 
in  the  late  reign,  but  had  never  been  brought  to 
trial,  and  had,  after  a  long  confinement,  been  admitted 
to  bail  by  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  Three  of  the 
noblemen  who  were  thus  under  recognisances  were 
Roman  Catholics.  The  fourth  was  a  Protestant  of 
great  note  and  influence,  the  Earl  of  Danby.  Since 
he  had  fallen  fi'om  power   and   had  been  accused  of 

I  Life  of  Dudley  North,  176.;  Lonsdale's  Memoirs;  Van  Citters,  Jnn« 
^.  1685. 
3  Commons'  Journals,  March  1.  1689. 


»1».]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  Ill 

treason  bv  the  Commons,  four  Parliaments  liad  been 
dissolved  ;  but  he  had  been  neither  acquitted  nor  con- 
demned. In  1679  the  Lords  had  considered,  with 
reference  to  his  situation,  the  question  whether  an  im- 
peachment was  or  was  not  terminated  by  a  dissolution. 
They  had  resolved,  after  long  debate  and  fiiU  examina- 
tion of  precedents,  that  the  impeachment  was  still 
j)ending.  That  resolution  they  now  rescinded.  A 
few  Whig  nobles  protested  against  this  step,  but  to 
little  purpose.  The  Commons  silently  acquiesced  in 
the  decision  of  the  Upper  House.  Danby  again  took 
his  seat  among  his  peers,  and  became  an  active  and 
powerful  member  of  the  Tory  party. ^ 

The  constitutional  question  on  which  the  Lords  thus, 
in  the  short  space  of  six  years,  pronounced  two  diametri- 
cally opposite  decisions,  slept  during  more  than  a  cen- 
tury, and  was  at  length  revived  by  the  dissolution 
which  took  place  during  the  long  trial  of  Warren  Hast- 
ings. It  Avas  then  necessary  to  determine  whether  the 
rule  laid  down  in  1679,  or  the  opposite  rule  laid  down 
in  1685,  was  to  be  accounted  the  law  of  the  land.  The 
point  was  long  debated  in  both  Houses  ;  and  the  best 
legal  and  parliamentary  abilities  Avhich  an  age  preemi- 
nently fertile  both  in  legal  and  in  parliamentary  ability 
could  supply  were  employed  in  tlie  discussion.  The 
lawyers  were  not  unequally  divided.  Tiiurlow,  Ken- 
yon,  Scott,  and  Erskine  maintained  that  the  dissolution 
had  put  an  end  to  the  impeachment.  The  contrary 
doctrine  was  held  by  Mansfield,  Camden,  Loughbor- 
ough, and  Grant.  But  among  those  statesmen  who 
grounded  their  arguments,  not  on  precedents  and  tech- 
nical analogies,  but  on  deej)  and  broad  constitutional 
principles,  there  was  little  difference  of  opinion.     Pitt 

1  Lords'  Journals,  March  18, 19. 1G79,  May  22.  1685. 

TOL.  II.  8 


112  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  FV 

and  Grenville,  as  well  as  Burke  and  Fox,  held  that  the 
impeachment  was  stili  pending.  Both  Houses  hy  great 
majorities  set  aside  the  decision  of  1685,  and  pro- 
nounced the  decision  of  1679  to  be  in  conformity  with 
the  law  of  Parliament. 

Of  the  national  crimes  which  had  b6en  committed 
Bill  for  re-  duHug  the  pauic  excited  by  the  fictions  of 
am'ilJder'^^  Oatcs,  the  most  signal  had  been  the  judicial 
of  Stafford,  inurder  of  Stafford.  The  sentence  of  that 
unhappy  nobleman  was  now  regarded  by  all  impartial 
persons  as  unjust.  The  principal  witness  for  the  pros- 
ecution had  been  convicted  of  a  series  of  foul  peijuries. 
It  was  the  duty  of  the  legislature,  under  such  circum- 
stances, to  do  justice  to  the  memory  of  a  guiltless  suf- 
ferer, and  to  efface  an  unmerited  stain  from  a  name 
long  illustrious  in  our  annals.  A  bill  for  reversing  the 
attainder  of  Stafford  was  passed  by  the  Upper  House, 
in  spite  of  the  murmurs  of  a  few  peers  who  were  un- 
willing' to  admit  that  they  had  shed  innocent  blood. 
The  Commons  read  the  bill  twice  without  a  division, 
and  ordered  it  to  be  committed.  But,  on  the  day  ap- 
pointed for  the  committee,  arrived  news  that  a  formida- 
ble rebellion  had  broken  out  in  the  West  of  England. 
It  was  consequently  necessary  to  postpone  much  im- 
portant business.  The  ameads  due  to  the  memory  of 
Stafford  were  deferred,  as  was  supposed,  only  for  a 
short  time.  But  the  misgovernment  of  James  in  a  few 
months  completely  turned  the  tide  of  public  feeling. 
During  several  generations  the  Roman  Catholics  were 
in  no  condition  to  demand  reparation  for  injustice,  and 
accounted  themselves  happy  if  they  were  permitted  to 
live  unmolested  in  obscurity  and  silence.  At  length, 
in  the  reign  of  King  George  the  Fourth,  more  than  a 
hundred  and  forty  years  after  the  day  on  which  the 


168M  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  113 

blood  of  StafFord  was  shed  on  Tower  Hill,  the  tardy 
expiation  was  accomplished.  A  law  annulling  the  at- 
tainder and  restoring  the  injured  family  to  its  ancient 
dignities  was  presented  to  Parliament  by  the  ministers 
of  the  crown,  was  eagerly  welcomed  by  public  men 
of  all  parties,  and  was  passed  without  one  dissentient 
voice. 1 

It  is  now  necessary  that  I  should  trace  the  origin  and 
progress  of  that  rebellion  by  which  the  deliberations  of 
the  Houses  were  suddenly  interrupted. 

I  Stat.  5  Geo.  IV.  c.  46. 


114  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  reiom  of  Charles  the  Sec- 
AVTiig  refu-     Olid,  somc  Whigs  who  had  been  deeply  impli- 

geeson  the  i    •        i  i  n       i  ,      .  "^  , 

Continent,  cated  111  the  plot  SO  tatal  to  their  party,  and 
who  knew  themselves  to  be  marked  out  for  destruc- 
tion, had  sought  an  asylum  in  the  Low  Countries. 

These  refugees  were  in  general  men  of  fiery  temper 
and  weak  judgment.  They  were  also  under  the  in- 
fluence of  that  peculiar  illusion  which  seems  to  belong 
to  their  situation.  A  politician  driven  into  banish- 
ment by  a  hostile  faction  generally  sees  the  society 
which  he  has  quitted  through  a  false  medium.  Every 
object  is  distorted  and  discoloured  by  his  regrets,  his 
longings,  and  his  resentments.  Every  little  discontent 
appears  to  him  to  portend  a  revolution.  Every  riot  is 
a  rebellion.  He  cannot  be  convinced  that  his  country 
does  not  pine  for  him  as  much  as  he  pines  for  his  coun- 
try. He  imagines  that  all  his  old  associates,  who  still 
dwell  at  their  homes  and  enjoy  their  estates,  are  tor- 
mented by  the  same  feelings  which  make  life  a  burden 
to  himself.  The  longer  his  expatriation,  the  greater 
does  this  hallucination  become.  The  lapse  of  time, 
which  cools  the  ardour  of  the  friends  whom  he  has  left 
behind,  inflames  his.  Every  month  his  impatience  to 
revisit  his  native  land  increases  ;  and  every  month  his 
native  land  remembers  and  misses  him  less.  This 
delusion  becomes  almost  a  madness  when  many  exiles 
who  suffer  in  the  same  cause  herd  together  in  a  foreign 
country.     Their  chief  employment  is  to  talk  of  what 


I 


ISnS.l  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  115 

tlu'v  once  were,  and  of  what  they  may  yet  be,  to  goad 
each  otlier  into  animosity  against  the  common  enemy, 
to  feed  each  otlier  with  extravagant  hopes  of  victory 
and  revenge.  Thus  they  become  ripe  for  enterprises 
which  would  at  once  be  pronounced  hopeless  by  any 
man  whose  passions  had  not  deprived  him  of  the  power 
of  calculating  chances. 

In  this  mood  were  many  of  the  outlaws  who  had 
assembled  on  the  Continent.  The  corre-  Their  corre- 
spondence which  they  kept  up  with  England  E'n^g'iand'^  "* 
was,  for  the  most  part,  such  as  tended  to  excite  their 
feelings  and  to  mislead  their  judgment.  Their  in- 
formation concerning  the  temper  of  the  public  mind 
was  chiefly  derived  fi'om  the  worst  members  of  the 
Whig  party,  from  men  Avho  were  plotters  and  libellers 
by  profession,  who  were  pursued  by  the  officers  of 
justice,  who  were  forced  to  skulk  in  disguise  throuo-h 
back  streets,  and  who  sometimes  lay  hid  for  weeks 
together  in  cocklofts  and  cellars.  The  statesmen  who 
had  formerly  been  the  ornaments  of  the  Country  Party, 
the  statesmen  who  afterwards  guided  the  counsels  of 
the  Convention,  would  have  given  advice  very  different 
from  that  which  was  given  by  such  men  as  John  Wild- 
man  and  Henry  Danvers. 

Wildman  had  served  forty  years  before  in  the  par- 
liamentary arm}^  but  had  been  more  distinguished 
there  as  an  agitator  than  as  a  soldier,  and,  had  early 
quitted  the  profession  of  arms  for  pursuits  better  suited 
to  his  temper.  His  hatred  of  monarchy  had  induced 
him  to  engage  in  a  long  series  of  conspiracies,  first 
against  the  Protector,  and  then  against  the  Stuarts. 
But  with  Wildman's  fanaticism  was  joined  a  tender 
care  for  his  own  safety.  He  had  a  wonderful  skill  in 
grazing  the  edge  of  treason.     No  man  understood  bet- 


116  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cif.  V. 

ter  how  to  instigate  others  to  desperate  enterprises  by 
\^ords  which,  when  repeated  to  a  jury,  might  seem  in- 
nocent, or,  at  worst,  ambiguous.  Such  was  his  cun- 
ning that,  though  always  plotting,  though  always  known 
to  be  plotting,  and  though  long  malignantly  watched  by 
a  vindictive  government,  he  eluded  every  danger,  and 
died  in  his  bed,  after  having  seen  two  generations  of 
his  accomplices  die  on  the  gallows.^  Danvers  was  a 
man  of  the  same  class,  hotheaded,  but  fainthearted, 
constantly  urged  to  the  brink  of  danger  by  enthusiasm, 
and  constantly  stopped  on  that  brink  by  cowardice. 
He  had  considerable  influence  among  a  portion  of  the 
Baptists,  had  written  largel}^  in  defence  of  their  pecu- 
liar opinions,  and  had  drawn  down  on  himself  the 
severe  censure  of  the  most  respectable  Puritans  by 
attempting  to  palhate  the  crimes  of  Matthias  and  John 
of  Ley  den.  It  is  probable  that,  had  he  possessed  a  lit- 
tle courage,  he  would  have  trodden  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  wretches  whom  he  defended.  He  was,  at  this  time, 
concealing  himself  from  the  officers  of  justice  ;  for  war- 
rants were  out  against  him  on  account  of  a  grossly 
calumnious  paper  of  which  the  government  had  dis- 
covered him  to  be  the  author.^ 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  what  kind  of  intelligence  and 
Characters      counscl  men,   such  as  have  been  described, 

of  the  lead-  ti      i  i  i  i  -1 

ing  refugees,  wcrc  likcly  to  scud  to  tlic  outlaws  m  the 
Netherlands.  Of  the  general  character  of  those  out- 
laws an  estimate  may  be  formed  from  a  few  samples. 

1  Clarendon's  History  of  the  Rebellion,  book  xiv.;  Burnet's  Own  Times, 
i.  546.  625.;  Wade's  and  Ireton's  Narratives,  Lansdowne  MS.  1152.;  West's 
information  in  the  Appendix  to  Sprat's  True  Account. 

2  London  Gazette,  Jan.  4.  ]68|;  Ferguson  MS.  in  Eachard's  History, 
lii.  746.;  Grey's  Narrative;  Sprat's  True  Account;  Danvers's  Treatise  on 
Baptism;  Danvers's  Innocency  and  Truth  vindicated;  Crosby's  History  of 
the  r.nglish  Baptists. 


1085.]  JAMES    THE   SECOND.  117 

One  of  the  most  conspicuous  among  tliem  was  John 
AylofFe,  a  lawyer  connected  by  affinity  with 
the  Hydes,  and  through  the  Hydes,  with 
James.  AylofFe  had  early  made  himself  remarkable 
by  offering  a  whimsical  insult  to  the  government.  At 
a  time  when  the  ascendency  of  the  court  of  Versailles 
had  excited  general  uneasiness,  he  had  contrived  to  put 
a  wooden  shoe,  the  estabhshed  type,  among  the  Eng- 
lish, of  French  tyranny,  into  the  chair  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  had  subsequently  been  concerned  in 
the  Whig  plot ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
he  was  a  party  to  the  design  of  assassinating  the  royal 
brothers.  He  was  a  man  of  parts  and  courage  ;  but  his 
moral  character  did  not  stand  liigli.  The  Puritan  di- 
vines whispered  that  he  was  a  careless  Gallio  or  some- 
thing worse,  and  that,  whatever  zeal  he  might  profess 
for  civil  liberty,  the  Saints  would  do  well  to  avoid  all 
connection  with  him.^ 

Nathaniel  Wade  was,  like  AylofFe,  a  lawyer.  He 
had  long  resided  at  Bristol,  and  had  been  cele- 
brated in  his  own  neighbourhood  as  a  vehe- 
ment republican.  At  one  time  he  had  formed  a  project 
of  emigrating  to  New  Jersey,  where  he  expected  to  find 
institutions  better  suited  to  his  taste  than  those  of  Eno;- 
land.  His  activity  in  electioneering  had  introduced 
him  to  the  notice  of  some  Whig  nobles.  They  had 
employed  him  professionally,  and  had,  at  length,  ad- 
mitted him  to  their  most  secret  counsels.  He  had  been 
deeply  concerned  in   the   scheme  of  insurrection,  and 

1  Sprat's  True  Account;  Burnet,  i.  634. ;  Wade's  Confession,  llarl.  MS. 
6845. 

Lord  Howard  of  Escrick  accused  Aylofle  of  proposing  to  assassinate  the 
Duke  of  York;  but  Lord  Howard  was  an  abject  liar;  and  tliis  story  waf 
not  part  of  his  (irigiiial  confession,  but  was  added  aftenvards  by  way  of 
Bupplement,  and  therefore  deserves  no  credit  whatever. 


118  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

had  undertaken  to  head  a  rising  in  his  own  city.  He 
had  also  been  privy  to  the  more  odious  plot  against  the 
lives  of  Charles  and  James.  But  he  always  declared 
that,  though  privy  to  it,  he  had  abhorred  it,  and  had 
attempted  to  dissuade  his  associates  fi'om  carrying  their 
design  into  effect.  For  a  man  bred  to  civil  pursuits, 
Wade  seems  to  have  had,  in  an  unusual  degree,  that 
sort  of  ability  and  that  sort  of  nerve  which  make  a 
good  soldier.  Unhappily  his  principles  and  his  cour- 
age proved  to  be  not  of  sufficient  force  to  support  him 
when  the  fight  was  over,  and  when,  in  a  prison,  he  had 
to  choose  between  death  and  infamy.^ 

Another  fugitive  was  Richard  Goodenough,  who  had 
Oooj.  formerly  been  Under  Sheriff  of  London.    On 

enough.  ^|jjg  ^i^u  liis  party  had  long  relied  for  services 
of  no  honourable  kind,  and  especially  for  the  selection 
of  jurymen  not  likely  to  be  troubled  with  scruples  in 
political  cases.  He  had  been  deeply  concerned  in 
those  dark  and  atrocious  parts  of  the  Whig  plot  which 
had  been  carefully  concealed  from  the  most  respect- 
able Whigs.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  plead,  in  extenuation 
of  his  guilt,  that  he  was  misled  by  inordinate  zeal  for 
the  public  good.  For  it  will  be  seen  that,  after  hav- 
ing disgraced  a  noble  cause  by  his  crimes,  he  be- 
trayed it  in  order  to  escape  from  his  well  merited 
punishment.^ 

Very  different  was  the  character  of  Richard  Rum- 
bold.     He  had  held  a  commission  in  Crom- 
well's own  regiment,  had  guarded  the  scaf- 
fold before  the  Banqueting  House  on  the  day  of  the 

1  Wade's  Confession,  Harl.  MS.  6845.;  Lansdowne  MS.  1152.;  Hollo- 
way's  narrative  in  the  Appendix  to  Sprat's  True  Account.  Wade  owned 
that  Holloway  had  told  nothing  hut  truth. 

2  Sprat's  True  Account  and  Appendix,  passim. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  119 

great  execution,  had  fought  at  Dunbar  and  Worcester, 
and  had  always  shown  in  the  highest  degree  the  quaU- 
ties  which  distinguished  the  invincible  army  in  which 
he  served,  courage  of  the  truest  temper,  fiery  enthusi- 
asm, both  poUtical  and  religious,  and,  with  that  en- 
thusiasm, all  the  power  of  selfgovernment  which  is 
characteristic  of  men  trained  in  well  disciplined  camps 
to  command  and  to  obey.  When  the  republican  troops 
were  disbanded,  Rumbold  became  a  maltster,  and  car- 
ried on  his  trade  near  Hoddesdon,  in  that  building 
from  which  the  Rye  House  Plot  derives  its  name.  It 
had  been  suggested,  though  not  absolutely  determined, 
in  the  conferences  of  the  most  violent  and  unscrupu- 
lous of  the  malecontents,  that  armed  men  should  be 
stationed  in  the  Rye  House  to  attack  the  Guards 
who  were  to  escort  Charles  and  James  from  New- 
market to  London.  In  these  conferences  Rumbold 
had  borne  a  part  from  which  he  would  have  shrunk 
with  horror  if  his  clear  understanding  liud  not  been 
ovei'clouded,  and  his  manly  heart  corrupted,  by  party 
spirit.^ 

A  more  important  exile  was  Ford  Grey,  Lord  Grey 
of  Wark.     He  had  been  a  zealous  Exclusion- 

.  Lord  Grej-. 

1st,  had  concurred  m  the  design  or  msurrec- 
tion,  and  had  been  committed  to  the  Tower,  but  had 
succeeded  in  making  his  keepers  drunk,  and  in  eft'ecting 
his  escape  to  the  Continent.  His  parliamentary  abili- 
ties were  gi'eat,  and  his  manners  pleasing :  but  his  lile 
had  been  sulUed  by  a  great  domestic  crime.  His  wife 
was  a  daughter  of  the  noble  house  of  Berkeley.     Her 

l  Sprat's  True  Account  and  Appendix;  Proceedings  against  TJunibnld  in 
the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Burnet's  own  Times,  i.  633.;  Appendix  to 
Fox's  History,  No.  IV. 


1 20  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

sister,  tlie  Lady  Henrietta  Berkeley,  was  allowed  to 
associate  and  correspond  with  him  as  with  a  brother  by 
blood.  A  fatal  attachment  sprang  up.  The  high  spirit 
and  strong  passions  of  Lady  Henrietta  broke  through  all 
restraints  of  virtue  and  decorum.  A  scandalous  elope- 
ment disclosed  to  the  whole  kingdom  the  shame  of  two 
illustrious  families.  Grey  and  some  of  the  agents  who 
had  served  him  in  his  amour  were  brought  to  trial  on  a 
charge  of  conspiracy.  A  scene  un])aralleled  in  our  legal 
history  was  exhibited  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench. 
The  seducer  appeared  with  dauntless  front,  accompa- 
nied by  his  paramour.  Nor  did  the  great  Whig  lords 
flinch  fi'om  their  friend's  side  even  in  that  extremity. 
Those  whom  he  had  wronged  stood  over  against  him,  and 
were  moved  to  transports  of  rage  by  the  sight  of  him. 
The  old  Earl  of  Berkeley  poured  forth  reproaches  and 
curses  on  the  wretched  Henrietta.  The  Countess  gave 
evidence,  broken  by  many  sobs,  and  at  length  fell  down 
in  a  swoon.  The  jury  found  a  verdict  of  guilty.  When 
the  court  rose.  Lord  Berkeley  called  on  all  his  friends 
to  help  him  to  seize  his  daughter.  The  partisans  of 
Grey  rallied  round  her.  Swords  were  drawn  on  both 
sides :  a  skirmish  took  place  in  Westminster  Hall ;  and 
it  was  with  difficulty  that  the  Judges  and  tipstaves 
parted  the  combatants.  In  our  time  such  a  trial  would 
be  fatal  to  the  character  of  a  public  man  ;  but  in  that 
age  the  standard  of  morality  among  the  great  was  so 
low,  and  party  spirit  was  so  violent,  that  Grey  still  con- 
tinued to  have  considerable  influence,  though  the  Pui'i- 
tans,  who  formed  a  strong  section  of  the  Whig  party, 
looked  somewhat  coldly  on  him.^ 

One  part  of  the  character,  or  rather  it  may  be  of  the 

1  Grey's  Narrative ;  his  trial  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials ;  Sprat'a 
True  Account. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  121 

fortune,  of  Grey  deserves  notice.  It  was  admitted  that 
everywhere,  except  on  the  field  of  battle,  he  showed  a 
high  degree  of  courage.  More  than  once  in  embarrass- 
ing circumstances,  when  his  life  and  liberty  were  at 
stake,  the  dignity  of  his  deportment  and  his  perfect 
command  of  all  his  faculties  extorted  praise  from  those 
who  neither  loved  nor  esteemed  him.  But  as  a  soldier 
he  incurred,  less  perhaps  by  his  faiilt  than  by  mischance, 
the  degrading  imputation  of  personal  cowardice. 

In  this  respect  he  differed  widely  from  his  friend  the 
Duke  of  Monmouth.     Ardent   and   intrepid 

1         r»    1  1      r>  1         1        T»T  1  Monmouth. 

on  the  field  or  battle,  Monmouth  was  every- 
where else  effeminate  and  irresolute.  The  accident 
of  his  birth,  his  personal  courage,  and  his  superficial 
graces,  had  placed  him  in  a  post  for  Avhich  he  was  al- 
together unfitted.  After  Avitnessins:  the  ruin  of  the 
party  of  which  he  had  been  the  nominal  head,  he  had 
retired  to  Holland.  The  Prince  and  Princess  of  Or- 
ange had  now  ceased  to  regard  him  as  a  rival.  Tliey 
received  him  most  hospitably ;  for  they  hoped  that,  by 
treating  him  with  kindness,  they  should  establish  a 
claim  to  the  gratitude  of  his  father.  They  knew  that 
paternal  afi'ection  was  not  yet  wearied  out,  that  letters 
and  supplies  of  money  still  came  secretly  from  White- 
hall to  Monmouth's  retreat,  and  that  Charles  frowned 
on  those  who  sought  to  pay  their  court  by  speaking  ill 
of  his  banished  son.  The  Duke  had  been  encourajxed 
to  expect  that,  in  a  very  short  time,  if  he  gave  no  new 
cause  of  displeasiire,  he  Avould  be  recalled  to  his  native 
land,  and  restored  to  all  his  high  honours  and  com- 
mands. Animated  by  such  expectations  he  had  been 
the  life  of  the  Hague  during  the  late  winter.  He  had 
been  the  most  cons])icuous  figure  at  a  succession  of  balls 
in  that  splendid  Orange  Hall,  which  blazes  on  every 


122  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

side  witli  tlie  most  ostentatious  colouring  of  Jordaens 
and  Hoiidthorst.^  He  had  taught  the  English  coun- 
try dance  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Dutch  ladies,  and 
had  in  his  turn  learned  from  them  to  skate  on  the 
canals.  The  Princess  had  accompanied  him  in  his  ex- 
peditions on  the  ice ;  and  the  figure  which  she  made 
there,  poised  on  one  leg,  and  clad,  in  petticoats  shorter 
than  are  gene^jally  worn  by  ladies  so  strictly  decorous, 
had  caused  some  wondet  and  mirth  to  the  foreign  min- 
isters. The  sullen  gravity  which  had  been  character- 
istic of  the  Stadtholder's  court  seemed  to  have  vanished 
before  the  influence  of  the  fascinating  Englishman. 
Even  the  stern  and  pensive  William  relaxed  into  good 
humour  when  his  brilliant  guest  appeared.'-^ 

Monmouth  meanwhile  carefully  avoided  all  that  could 
give  offence  in  the  quarter  to  which  he  looked  for  pro- 
tection. He  saw  little  of  any  Whigs,  and  nothing  of 
those  violent  men  who  had  been  concerned  in  the  worst 
part  of  the  Whig  plot.  He  was  therefore  loudly  ac- 
cused, by  his  old  associates,  of  fickleness  and  ingrati- 
tude.^ 

By  none  of  the  exiles  was  this  accusation  urged  with 
more  vehemence  and  bitterness  than  by  Rob- 
ert Ferguson,  the  Judas  of  Dryden's  great 
satire.  Ferguson  was  by  birth  a  Scot ;  but  England 
had  long  been  his  residence.  At  the  time  of  the  Res- 
toration,  indeed,  he  had  held  a  living  in  Kent.  He  had 
been  bred  a  Presbytei'ian  ;  but  the  Presbyterians  had 
cast  him  out,  and  he  had  become  an  Independent.  He 
had  been  master  of  an  academy  which  the  Dissenters 

-  In  the  Pepysian  Collection  is  a  print  representing  one  of  the  balls  which 
about  this  time  William  and  Mary  gave  in  the  Oranje  Zaal. 

2  Avaiix  Neg.  Jan.  25.  1685.  Letter  from  James  to  the  Princess  of  Or- 
»Dge  dated  Jan.  1684,  among  Birch's  Extracts  in  the  British  Museum. 

*  Grey's  Narrative;  Wade's  Ooufessiou,  Lausdowne  MS.  1152. 


1585.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  123 

had  set  up  at  Islington  as  a  ri^^al  to  Westminstei-  School 
and  the  Charter  House  ;  and  he  had  preached  to  large 
confrrecations  at  a  meetino;house  in  Moorfiekls.  He 
had  also  publislied  some  theological  treatises  which  may 
still  be  found  in  the  dusty  recesses  of  a  few  old  libra- 
ries :  but,  though  texts  of  scripture  were  always  on 
his  lips,  those  who  had  pecuniary  transactions  Avith  him 
Boon  found  him  to  be  a  mere  swindler. 

At  length  he  turned  his  attention  almost  entirely 
from  theology  to  the  worst  part  of  politics.  He  be- 
lonjied  to  the  class  whose  office  it  is  to  render  in  troubled 
times  to  exasperated  parties  those  services  from  which 
honest  men  shrink  in  disgust  and  prudent  men  in  fear, 
the  class  of  fanatical  knaves.  Violent,  malignant,  re- 
gardless of  truth,  insensible  to  shame,  insatiable  of  noto- 
riety, delfghting  in  intrigue,  in  tumult,  in  mischief  for 
its  own  sake,  he  toiled  during  many  years  in  the  dark- 
est mines  of  faction.  He  lived  among  libellers  and  false 
witnesses.  He  was  the  keeper  of  a  secret  purse  from 
which  agents  too  vile  to  be  acknowledged  received  hire, 
and  the  director  of  a  secret  press  whence  pamphlets, 
bearing  no  name,  were  daily  issued.  He  boasted  that 
he  had  contrived  to  scatter  lampoons  about  the  terrace 
of  Windsor,  and  even  to  lay  them  under  the  royal  i)il- 
low.  In  this  way  of  life  he  was  put  to  many  shifts,  was 
forced  to  assume  many  names,  and  at  one  time  had  four 
different  lodginjrs  in  different  corners  of  London.  He 
was  deeply  engaged  in  the  Rye  House  Plot.  There 
is,  indeed,  reason  to  believe  that  he  Avas  the  original 
author  of  those  san<xuinarv  schemes  which  brought  so 
much  discredit  on  the  whole  Whig  party.  When  the 
consjMracy  was  detected  and  his  associates  were  in  dis- 
may, he  bade  them  farewell  with  a  laugh,  and  told 
them  that  they  were  novices,  that  he  had  been  used  to 


124  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

flight,  concealment  and  disguise,  and  that  he  should 
never  leave  off  plotting  while  he  lived.  He  escaped  to 
the  Continent.  But  it  seemed  that  even  on  the  Conti- 
nent he  was  not  secure.  The  English  envoys  at  foreign 
courts  were  directed  to  be  on  the  watch  for  him.  The 
French  government  offered  a  reward  of  five  hundred 
pistoles  to  any  who  would  seize  him.  Nor  was  it  easy  for 
him  tc  escape  notice  ;  for  his  broad  Scotch  accent,  his 
tall  and  lean  figure,  his  lantern  jaws,  the  gleam  of  his 
sharp  eyes  which  were  always  overhung  by  his  wig,  his 
cheeks  inflamed  by  an  eruption,  his  shoulders  deformed 
by  a  stoop,  and  his  gait  distinguished  from  that  of  other 
men  by  a  peculiar  shuffle,  made  him  remarkable  wher- 
ever he  appeared.  But,  though  he  was,  as  it  seemed, 
pursued  with  peculiar  animosity,  it  was  whispered  that 
this  animosity  was  feigned,  and  that  the  officers  of  jus- 
tice had  secret  orders  not  to  see  him.  That  he  was 
really  a  bitter  malecontent  can  scarcely  be  doubted. 
But  there  is  strong  reason  to  believe  that  he  provided 
for  his  own  safety  by  pretending  at  Whitehall  to  be  a 
spy  on  the  Whigs,  and  by  furnishing  the  government 
with  just  so  much  information  as  sufficed  to  keep  up  his 
credit.  This  hypothesis  furnishes  a  simple  explanation 
of  what  seemed  to  his  associates  to  be  his  unnatural 
recklessness  and  audacity.  Being  himself  out  of  danger, 
he  always  gave  his  vote  for  the  most  violent  and  peril- 
ous course,  and  sneered  very  complacently  at  the  pusil- 
lanimity of  men  who,  not  having  taken  the  infamous 
precautions  on  which  he  relied,  were  disposed  to  think 
twice  before  they  placed  life,  and  objects  dearer  than 
life,  on  a  single  hazard.-^ 

1  Burnet,  i.  542.;  Wood.  Ath.  Ox.  under  the  name  of  Owen;  Absalom 
and  Achitophel,  part  ii.;  Eaehard,  iii.  682.  697.;  Sprat's  True  Account, 
passim;  Noncouformist's  Memorial;  North's  Exaraen,  399. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  125 

As  soon  as  he  was  in  the  Low  Countries  he  began  to 
form  new  projects  against  the  English  government,  and 
found  among  his  fellow  emigrants  men  ready  to  listen 
to  his  evil  counsels.  Monmouth,  however,  stood  obsti- 
nately aloof;  and,  without  the  help  of  Monmouth's  im- 
mense popularity,  it  was  impossible  to  effect  anything. 
Yet  suc'h  was  the  impatience  and  rashness  of  the  exiles 
that  they  tried  to  find  another  leader.  They  sent  an 
embassy  to  that  solitary  retreat  on  the  shores  of  Lake 
Leman  where  Edmund  Ludlow,  once  consj)icuous  among 
the  chiefs  of  the  parliamentary  army  and  among  the 
members  of  the  High  Court  of  Justice,  had,  during 
many  years,  hidden  himself  from  the  vengeance  of  the 
restored  Stuarts.  The  stern  old  regicide,  however,  re- 
fused to  quit  his  hermitage.  His  work,  he  said,  was 
done.  If- England  was  still  to  be  saved,  she  must  be 
saved  by  younger  men.^ 

The  unexpect.ed  demise  of  the  crown  changed  the 
whole  aspect  of  affiiirs.  Any  hope  which  the  proscribed 
Whigs  might  have  cherished  of  returning  peaceably  to 
their  native  land  was  extincjuished  by  the  death  of  a 
careless  and  goodnatured  prince,  and  by  the  accession 
of  a  prince  obstinate  in  all  things,  and  especially  obsti- 
nate in  revenge.  Ferguson  was  in  his  element.  Desti- 
tute of  the  talents  both  of  a  writer  and  of  a  statesman, 
he  had  in  a  high  degree  the  unenviable  qualifications 
of  a  tempter ;  and  now,  with  the  malevolent  activity 
and  dexterity  of  an  evil  spirit,  he  ran  from  outlaw  to 
outlaw,  chattered  in  every  ear,  and  stirred  u})  in  eveiy 
bosom  savaiie  animosities  and  wild  desires. 

He  no  longer  des])aired  of  being  able  to  seduce  Mon- 
mouth. The  situation  of  that  unhappy  young  man  was 
completely  changed.  While  he  was  dancing  and  skating 
1  Wade's  Coufessioii.  Harl.  MS.  G845. 


126  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ck.  Y. 

at  the  Hague,  and  expecting  every  day  a  summons  to 
London,  he  was  overwhelmed  with  misery  by  the  tid- 
ings of  his  father's  death  and  of  his  uncle's  accession. 
During  the  night  which  followed  the  arrival  of  the 
news,  those  w^ho  lodged  near  him  could  distinctly  hear 
his  sobs  and  his  piercing  cries.  He  quitted  the  Hague 
the  next  day,  having  solemnly  pledged  his  word,  both 
to  the  Prince  and  to  the  Princess  of  Orange,  not  to 
attempt  anything  against  the  government  of  England, 
and  having  been  supplied  by  them  with  money  to  meet 
immediate  demands.^ 

The  prospect  which  lay  before  Monmouth  was  not  a 
bright  one.  There  Avas  no  probability  that  he  would 
be  recalled  from  banishment.  On  the  Continent  his 
life  could  no  longer  be  passed  amidst  the  splendour  and 
festivity  of  a  court.  His  covisins  at  the  Hague  seem 
to  have  really  regarded  him  with  kindness ;  but  they 
could  no  longer  countenance  him  openly  without  serious 
risk  of  producing  a  rupture  between  England  and  Hol- 
land. William  offered  a  kind  and  judicious  suggestion. 
The  war  which  was  then  raging  in  Hungary,  between 
the  Emperor  and  the  Turks,  was  watched  by  all  Europe 
with  interest  almost  as  great  as  that  which  the  Cru- 
sades had  excited  five  hundred  years  earlier.  Many 
gallant  gentlemen,  both  Protestant  and  Catholic,  were 
fighting  as  volunteers  in  the  common  cause  of  Chris- 
tendom. The  Prince  advised  Monmouth  to  repair  to 
the  imperial  camp,  and  assured  him  that,  if  he  would 
do  so,  he  should  not  want  the  means  of  making  an  ap- 
pearance befitting  an  English  nobleman. ^  This  coun- 
sel was  excellent :  but  the  Duke  could  not  make  up 

1  Avaux  Neg.  Feb.  20.  22.   1685;   Monmouth's  letter  to  James  from 
Ringwood. 
a  The  Historj-  of  King  William  the  Third,  2d  edition,  1703,  vol  i.  ISO. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  127 

his  mind.  He  retired  to  Brussels  accompanied  bj  Hen- 
rietta Wentworth,  Baroness  Wentworth  of  Nettlestede, 
a  damsel  of  high  rank  and  ample  fortune,  who  loved 
him  passionately,  who  had  sacrificed  for  his  sake  her 
maiden  honour  and  the  hope  of  a  splendid  alliance, 
who  had  followed  him  into  exile,  and  whom  he  be- 
lieved to  be  his  wife  in  the  sight  of  heaverf.  Under 
the  soothing  influence  of  female  friendship,  his  lacer- 
ated mind  healed  fast.  He  seemed  to  have  found  hap- 
piness in  obscurity  and  repose,  and  to  have  forgotten 
that  he  had  been  the  ornament  of  a  splendid  court  and 
the  head  of  a  great  party,  that  he  had  commanded  ar- 
mies, and  that  he  had  aspired  to  a  throne. 

But  he  was  not  suffered  to  remain  quiet.  Ferguson 
employed  all  his  powers  of  temptation.  Grey,  who 
knew  not  where  to  turn  for  a  pistole,  and  was  ready 
for  any  undertaking,  however  desperate,  lent  his  aid. 
No  art  was  sj)ared  which  could  draw  JMonmouth  from 
retreat.  To  the  first  invitations  Avhich  he  received 
from  his  old  associates  he  returned  unfavourable  an- 
swers. He  pronounced  the  difficulties  of  a  descent  on 
England  insuperable,  protested  that  he  was  sick  of 
public  life,  and  begged  to  be  left  in  the  enjoyment  of 
his  newly  found  happiness.  But  he  was  little  in  the 
habit  of  resisting  skilful  and  urgent  importunity.  It  is 
said,  too,  that  he  was  induced  to  quit  his  retirement 
by  the  same  powerful  influence  which  had  made  that 
retirement  delightful.  Lady  Wentworth  wished  to 
see  him  a  King.  Her  rents,  her  diamonds,  her  credit 
were  put  at  his  disposal.  Monmouth's  judgment  was 
not  convinced ;  but  he  had  not  firmness  to  resist  such 
solicitations.^ 

1  Welwood's  Memoirs,  App.  xv.;  IJurnct,  i.  030.     Grey  told  a  somewhat 
different  story:  but  he  told  it  to  save  his  life.    The  Spanish  ambassador  at 

VOL.  II.  9 


128  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Y 

By  the  English  exiles  he  was  joyfully  welcomed,  and 
Scotch  refu-  unanimously  acknowledged  as  their  head, 
gees.  g^j.    ^j-jgj,g    ^,jjg   another   class   of  emigrants 

who  were  not  disposed  to  recognise  his  supremacy. 
Misgovernment,  such  as  had  never  been  known  in  the 
southern  part  of  our  island,  had  driven  from  Scotland 
to  the  Continent  many  fugitives,  the  intemperance  of 
whose  political  and  religious  zeal  was  proportioned  to 
the  oppression  which  they  had  undergone.  These 
men  were  not  willino;  to  follow  an  Eno;lish  leader. 
Even  in  destitution  and  exile  they  retained  their  punc- 
tilious national  pride,  and  would  not  consent  that  their 
country  should  be,  in  their  persons,  degraded  into  a 
Earl  of  province.  They  had  a  captain  of  their  own, 
Argyie.  Archibald,  ninth  Earl  of  Argyle,  who,  as 
chief  of  the  great  tribe  of  Campbell,  was  known  among 
the  population  of  the  Highlands  by  the  proud  name  of 
Mac  Callum  More.  His  father,  the  Marquess  of 
Argyle,  had  been  the  head  of  the  Scotch  Covenanters, 
had  greatly  contributed  to  the  ruin  of  Charles  the  First, 
and  was  not  thought  by  the  Royalists  to  have  atoned 
for  this  offence  by  consenting  to  bestow  the  empty  title 
of  King,  and  a  state  prison  in  a  palace,  on  Charles  the 
Second.  After  the  return  of  the  royal  family  the  Mar- 
quess was  put  to  death.  His  marquisate  became  ex- 
tinct ;  but  his  son  was  permitted  to  inherit  the  ancient 
earldom,  and  was  still  among  the  greatest  of  the  nobles 
of  Scotland.  The  Earl's  conduct  during  the  twenty 
years  which  followed  the  Restoration  had  been,  as  he 

the  English  court,  Don  Pedro  de  Ronquillo,  in  a  letter  to  the  governor  of 
the  Low  Countries  written  about  this  time,  sneers  at  Monmouth  for  living 
on  the  bounty  of  a  fond  woman,  and  bints  a  very  unfounded  suspicion  that 
the  Dul<e's  passion  was  altogether  interested.  "  Hallaudose  hoy  tan  falto 
de  medios  que  ha  menester  trasformarse  en  Amor  con  Miledi  en  vista  de  la 
necesidad  de  poder  subsistir."  —  Ronquillo  to  Grana,  '^'"^^^'^  '  1685. 


W85.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  129 

afterwards  thought,  criminally  moderate.  He  had,  on 
some  occasions,  oi)posed  the  administration  which  af- 
flicted his  country  :  but  his  opposition  had  been  lan- 
guid and  cautious.  His  compliances  in  ecclesiastical 
matters  had  given  scandal  to  rigid  Presbyterians  ;  and 
so  far  had  he  been  from  sliowing  any  inclination  to 
resistance  that,  when  the  Covenanters  had  been  perse- 
cuted into  insurrection,  he  had  brought  into  the  field 
a  large  body  of  his  dependents  to  support  the  gov- 
ernment. 

Such  had  been  his  political  course  until  the  Duke  of 
York  came  down  to  Edinburgh  armed  with  the  whole 
regal  authority.  The  despotic  viceroy  soon  found  that 
he  could  not  expect  entire  support  fi-om  Argyle.  Since 
the  most  powerful  chief  in  the  kingdom  could  not  be 
gained,  it  was  thought.necessary  that  he  should  be  de- 
stroyed. On  grounds  so  frivolous  that  even  the  spirit 
of  party  and  the  spirit  of  chicane  were  ashamed  of  them, 
he  was  brought  to  trial  for  treason,  convicted,  and  sen- 
tenced to  death.  The  partisans  of  the  Stuarts  after- 
wards asserted  that  it  was  never  meant  to  carry  this 
sentence  into  effect,  and  that  the  only  object  of  the 
prosecution  was  to  frighten  him  into  ceding  his  exten- 
sive jurisdiction  in  tlic  Highlands.  Whether  James 
designed,  as  his  enemies  suspected,  to  commit  murder, 
or  only,  as  his  friends  affirmed,  to  commit  extortion  by 
threatening  to  commit  murder,  cannot  now  be  ascer- 
tained. "I  know  nothing  of  the  Scotch  law,"  said 
Halifax  to  King  Charles ;  "  but  this  I  know,  that  we 
should  not  hang  a  dog  here  on  the  grounds  on  which 
my  Lord  Argyle  has  been  sentenced."  ^ 

1  IVoceedinKs  npain?t.  Ar<,'yle  in  the  Collection  of  State  Triiils;  Burnet, 
i  r)21.:  A  true  imd  plain  Account  of  the  Discoveries  made  in  Scotland, 
I(i84;  The  Scotch  Mist  cle;ired;  Sir  George  Mackenzie's  Vindication; 
Lord  I'ountainliali's  Chronological  Notes. 


180  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

Argyle  escaped  in  disguise  to  England,  and  thence 
passed  over  to  Friesland.  In  that  secluded  province 
his  father  had  bought  a  small  estate,  as  a  place  of 
refuge  for  the  family  in  civil  troubles.  It  was  said, 
among  the  Scots,  that  this  purchase  had  been  made  in 
consequence  of  the  predictions  of  a  Celtic  seer,  to  whom 
it  had  been  revealed  that  Mac  Galium  More  would  one 
day  be  driven  forth  fi-om  the  ancient  mansion  of  his 
race  at  Inverary.^  But  it  is  probable  that  the  politic 
Marquess  had  been  w^arned  rather  by  the  signs  of  the 
times  than  by  the  visions  of  any  prophet.  In  Friesland 
Earl  Archibald  resided  during  some  time  so  quietly 
that  it  was  not  generally  known  whither  he  had  fled. 
From  his  retreat  he  carried  on  a  correspondence  with 
his  friends  in  Great  Britain,  w^as  a  party  to  the  Whig 
conspiracy,  and  concerted  with  the  chiefs  of  that  con- 
spiracy a  plan  for  invading  Scotland.^  This  plan  had 
been  dropped  upon  the  detection  of  the  Rye  House 
Plot,  but  became  again  the  subject  of  his  thoughts  after 
the  demise  of  the  crown. 

He  had,  during  his  residence  on  the  Continent,  re- 
flected much  more  deeply  on  religious  questions  than 
in  the  preceding  years  of  his  life.  In  one  respect  the 
effect  of  these  reflections  on  his  mind  had  been  perni- 
cious. His  partiality  for  the  synodical  form  of  church 
government  now  amounted  to  bigotry.  When  he  re- 
membered how  long  he  had  conformed  to  the  estab- 
lished worship,  he  was  overwhelmed  with  shame  and 
remorse,  and  showed  too  many  signs  of  a  disposition  to 
atone  for  his  defection  by  violence  and  intolerance. 
He  had  however,  in  no  long  time,  an  opportunity  of 
proving  that  the  fear  and  love  of  a  higher  Power  had 

'  Information  of  Robert  Smith  in  the  App.  to  Sprat's  True  Account. 
*  True  and  plain  Account  of  the  Discoveries  made  in  Scotland. 


1886.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  131 

nerved  him  for  the  most  formidable  conflicts  by  which 
human  nature  can  be  tried. 

To  his  companions  in  adversity  his  assistance  was  of 
the  highest  moment.  Though  proscribed  and  a  fugi- 
tive, he  was  still,  in  some  sense,  the  most  powerful  sub- 
ject in  the  British  dominions.  In  Avealth,  even  before 
his  attainder,  he  was  probably  inferior,  not  only  to  the 
great  English  nobles,  but  to  some  of  the  opulent  es- 
quires of  Kent  and  Norfolk.  But  his  patriarchal  au- 
thority, an  authority  which  no  wealth  could  give  and 
which  no  attainder  could  take  away,  made  him,  as  a 
leader  of  an  insurrection,  truly  formidable.  No  south- 
ern lord  could  feel  any  confidence  that,  if  he  ventured 
to  resist  the  government,  even  his  own  gamekeepers  and 
huntsmen  would  stand  by  him.  An  Earl  of  Bedford, 
an  EarLof  Devonshire,  could  not  engage  to  bring  ten 
men  into  the  field.  Mac  Galium  More,  penniless  and 
deprived  of  his  earldom,  might,  at  any  moment,  raise 
a  serious  civil  war.  He  had  only  to  show  himself  on 
the  coast  of  Lorn  ;  and  an  army  would,  in  a  few  days, 
gather  round  him.  The  force,  which,  in  favourable 
circumstances,  he  could  bring  into  the  field,  amounted 
to  five  thousand  fighting  men,  devoted  to  his  service, 
accustomed  to  the  use  of  target  and  broadsword,  not 
afraid  to  encounter  regular  troops  even  in  the  open 
plain,  and  pei'haps  superior  to  regular  troops  in  the 
qualifications  requisite  for  the  defence  of  wild  moimtain 
passes,  hidden  in  mist,  and  torn  by  headlong  torrents. 
What  such  a  force,  well  directed,  could  eflfect,  even 
against  veteran  regiments  and  skilful  commanders,  was 
proved,  a  few  years  later,  at  Killiecrankie. 

But,  strong  as  was  the  claim  of  Argyle  to  the  confi- 
dence of  the  exiled  Scots,  there  was  a  faction  gj^  Patrick 
among   them   which    regarded  him   with   no  "'^'" 


132  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T 

friendly  feeling,  and  which  wished  to  make  use  of  hia 
name  and  influence,  without  entrusting  to  him  any 
real  power.  The  chief  of  this  faction  was  a  lowland 
gentleman,  who  had  been  implicated  in  the  Whig 
])lot,  and  had  with  difficulty  eluded  the  vengeance  of 
the  court.  Sir  Patrick  Hume,  of  Polwarth,  in  Berwick- 
shire. Great  doubt  has  been  thrown  on  his  integrity, 
but  without  sufficient  reason.  It  must,  however,  be 
admitted  that  he  injured  his  cause  by  perverseness  as 
much  as  he  could  have  done  by  treachery.  He  was 
a  man  incapable  alike  of  leading  and  of  following,  con- 
ceited, captious,  and  wrongheaded,  an  endless  talker, 
a  sluggard  in  action  against  the  enemy,  and  active  only 
against  his  own  allies.  With  Hume  was  closely  con- 
sir  John  uected  another  Scottish  exile  of  great  note, 
Cochrane.  ^^^io  had  many  of  the  same  faults,  Sir  John 
Cochrane,  second  son  of  the  Earl  of  Dundonald. 

A  far  higher  character  belonged  to  Andrew  Fletcher 
Fletcher  of  of  Saltouu,  a  mau  distinguished  by  learning 
Saitoun.  ^j^j  eloquence,  distinguished  also  by  courage, 
disinterestedness,  and  public  spirit,  but  of  an  irritable 
and  impracticable  temper.  Like  many  of  his  most  il- 
lustrious contemporaries,  Milton,  for  example,  Harring- 
ton, Marvel,  and  Sidney,  Fletcher  had,  from  the  mis- 
government  of  several  successive  princes,  conceived  a 
strong  aversion  to  hereditaiy  monarchy.  Yet  he  was 
no  democrat.  He  was  the  head  of  an  ancient  Norman 
house,  and  was  proud  of  his  descent.  He  was  a  fine 
speaker  and  a  fine  writer,  and  was  proud  of  his  intel- 
lectual superiority.  Both  in  his  character  of  gentle- 
man, and  in  his  character  of  scholar,  he  looked  down 
with  disdain  on  the  common  people,  and  was  so  little 
disposed  to  entrust  them  with  political  power  that  he 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  133 

thought  them  unfit  even  to  enjoy  personal  freedom.  It 
is  a  curious  circumstance  that  this  man,  the  most  honest, 
fearless,  and  uncompromising  republican  of  his  time, 
should  have  been  the  author  of  a  plan  for  reducing  a 
large  part  of  the  working  classes  of  Scotland  to  slavery. 
He  bore,  in  truth,  a  lively  resemblance  to  those  Ro- 
man Senators  who,  while  they  hated  the  name  of  King, 
guarded  the  privik^ges  of  tlieir  order  with  inflexible 
pride  against  the  encroachments  of  the  multitude,  and 
governed  their  bondmen  and  bondwomen  by  means  of 
the  stocks  and  the  scourge. 

Amsterdam  was  the  place  vvliere  tlie  leading  emi- 
grants, Scotch  and  English,  assembled.  Argyle  re- 
paired thither  from  Frieshmd,  Monmouth  from  Brabant. 
It  soon  appeared  that  the  fugitives  had  scarcely  anything 
in  cTJmmon  except  hatred  of  James  and  impatience  to 
return  from  banishment.  The  Scots  were  jealous  of  the 
English,  the  Enghsh  of  the  Scots.  Monmouth's  high 
pretensions  were  offensive  to  Argyle,  who,  proud  of 
ancient  nobility  and  of  a  legitimate  descent  from  kings, 
was  by  no  means  inclined  to  do  homage  to  the  offspring 
of  a  vagrant  and  ignoble  love.  But  of  all  the  dissen- 
sions  by  which  the  little  band  of  outlaws  was  distracted 
the  most  serious  was  tliat  which  arose  between  Argyle 
and  a  portion  of  his  own  followers.'  Some  of  unreason- 
the  Scottish  exiles  had,  in  a  long  course  of  oftheScotd! 
opposition  to  tyramiy,  been  excited  into  a  re^"s^« 
morbid  state  of  understanding  and  temper,  which  made 
the  most  just  and  necessary  restraint  insupportable  to 
them.  Tliey  knew  that  without  Argyle  they  could 
do  notliing.  They  ought  to  have  known  that,  unless 
they  Avished  to  run  lieadlong  to  ruin,  they  must  either 
repose  full  confidence  in  their  leader,  or  relinquish  all 
thoughts  of  militar}''  enterprise.     Experience  has  fully 


134  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

proved  that  in  wai*  every  operation,  from  the  greatest 
to  the  smallest,  oujiht  to  be  under  the  absolute  direc- 
tion  of  one  mind,  and  that  eveiy  subordinate  agent, 
in  his  degree,  ought  to  obey  implicitly,  strenuously, 
and  with  the  show  of  cheerfulness,  orders  which  he  dis- 
approves, or  of  which  the  reasons  are  kept  secret  from 
him.  Representative  assemblies,  public  discussions,  and 
all  the  other  checks  by  which,  in  civil  aifairs,  rulers  ai'e 
restrained  fi-om  abusing  power,  are  out  of  place  in  a 
camp.  Machiavel  justly  imj^uted  many  of  the  disasters 
of  Venice  and  Florence  to  the  jealousy  which  led  those 
i-epublics  to  interfere  with  every  act  of  their  generals.^ 
The  Dutch  practice  of  sending  to  an  army  deputies, 
without  whose  consent  no  great  blow  could  be  struck, 
was  almost  equally  pernicious.  It  is  undoubtedly  by  no 
means  certain  that  a  captain,  who  has  been  entrusted 
with  dictatorial  power  in  the  hour  of  peril,  will  quietly 
surrender  that  powder  in  the  hour  of  triumph  ;  and  this 
is  one  of  the  many  considerations  which  ought  to  make 
men  hesitate  long  before  they  resolve  to  vindicate  pub- 
lic liberty  by  the  sword.  But,  if  they  determine  to  try 
the  chance  of  war,  they  will,  if  they  are  wise,  entrust 
to  their  chief  that  plenary  authority  without  which  war 
cannot  be  well  conducted.  It  is  possible  that,  if  they 
give  him  that  authority,  he  may  turn  out  a  Cromwell 
or  a  Napoleon.  But  is  almost  certain  that,  if  they  with- 
hold from  him  that  authority,  their  enterprises  will  end 
like  the  enterprise  of  Argyle. 

Some  of  the  Scottish  emigrants,  heated  with  repub- 
lican enthusiasm,  and  utterly  destitute  of  the  skill  neces- 
sary to  the  conduct  of  great  affairs,  employed  all  their 
industry  and  ingenuity,  not  in  collecting  means  for  the 
attack  which  they  were  about  to  make  on  a  formidable 
1  Discorsi  sopra  la  prima  Deca  di  Tito  Livio,  lib.  ii.  cap.  33. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  135 

enemy,  but  in  devising  restraints  on  their  leader's  power 
and  securities  against  liis  ambition.  The  selfcomplacent 
stupidity  with  which  they  insisted  on  organizing  an  army 
as  if  they  liad  been  organizing  a  commonweakh  woukl 
be  incredible  if  it  had  not  been  frankly  and  even  boast- 
fully recorded  by  one  of  themselves. ^ 

At  length  all  differences  were  compromised.  It  was 
determined  that  an  attempt  should  be  forth-  An-ange- 

•  1  1  1  p   o         1         1       nifuts  for  an 

witli  made  on  the  western  coast  or  ocotland,   attempt  on 

11  -iiii  ir>ii  11  EnglaoU  and 

and  that  it  sJiouid  be  promptly  lollowed  by  a  Scotland. 
descent  on  England. 

Argyle  was  to  hold  the  nominal  command  in  Scot- 
land :  but  he  was  placed  under  the  control  of  a  Com- 
mittee which  reserved  to  itself  all  the  most  important 
parts  of  the  military  administration.  This  Committee 
was  empowered  to  detei-mine  where  the  expedition 
should  land,  to  appoint  officers,  to  superintend  the 
levying  of  troops,  to  dole  ovit  provisions  and  amminii- 
tion.  All  that  Avas  left  to  the  general  was  to  direct 
the  evolutions  of  the  army  in  the  field,  and  he  was 
forced  to  promise  that  even  in  the  field,  except  in  the 
case  of  a  surprise,  he  would  do  nothing  without  the 
assent  of  a  council  of  war. 

Monmouth  was  to  command  in  England.  His  soft 
mind  had,  as  usual,  taken  an  impress  from  the  society 
which  surrounded  him.  Ambitious  hopes,  which  had 
seemed  to  be  extinguished,  had  revived  in  his  bosom. 
He  remembered  the  affection  with  which  he  had  been 
constantly  greeted  by  the  common  people  in  town  and 
country,  and  expected  that  they  would  now  rise  by  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  to  welcome  him.  He  remembered 
the  good  will  which  the  soldiers  had  always  borne  him, 
and  flattered  himself  that  they  would  come  over  to  hiin 
1  See  Sir  Patrick  Hume's  Narrative,  ^a«sii«. 


136  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

by  regiments.  Encouraging  messages  reached  him  in 
quick  succession  from  London.  He  was  assured  that 
the  violence  and  injustice  with  which  the  elections  had 
been  carried  on  had  driven  the  nation  mad,  that  tlie 
])rudence  of  the  leading  Whigs  had  with  difficulty  pre- 
vented a  sanguinary  outbreak  on  the  day  of  the  coro- 
nation, and  that  all  the  great  Lords  who  had  supported 
the  Exclusion  Bill  were  impatient  to  rally  round  him. 
Wildman,  who  loved  to  talk  treason  in  parables,  sent 
to  say  that  the  Earl  of  Richmond,  just  two  hundred 
yeai's  before,  had  landed  in  England  with  a  handful  of 
men,  and  had  a  few  days  later  been  crowned,  on  the 
field  of  Bosworth,  with  the  diadem  taken  from  the  head 
of  Richard.  Danvers  undertook  to  raise  the  City. 
The  Duke  was  deceived  into  the  belief  that,  as  soon  as 
he  set  up  his  standard,  Bedfordshire,  Buckinghamshire, 
Hampshire,  Cheshire  would  rise  in  arms.^  He  conse- 
quently became  eager  for  the  enterprise  from  which  a 
few  weeks  before  he  had  shrunk.  His  countrymen  did 
not  impose  on  him  restrictions  so  elaborately  absurd  as 
those  which  the  Scotch  emigrants  had  devised.  All 
that  was  required  of  him  was  to  promise  that  he  would 
not  assume  the  regal  title  till  his  pretensions  had  been 
submitted  to  the  judgment  of  a  ftee  Parliament. 

It  was  determined  that  two  Englishmen,  Ayloffe  and 
Rumbold,  should  accompany  Argyle  to  Scotland,  and 
that  Fletcher  should  20  with  Monmouth  to  England. 
Fletcher,  from  the  beginning,  had  augured  ill  of  the  en- 
terprise :  but  his  chivalrous  spirit  would  not  suffer  him 
to  decline  a  risk  which  his  friends  seemed  eager  to  en- 
counter. When  Grey  repeated  with  approbation  what 
Wildman  had  said  about  Richmond  and  Richard,  the 
well  read  and  thoughtful  Scot  justly  remarked  that 
1  Grey's  Narrative  i  Wade's  Confession,  Harl.  MS.  6845. 


108O.J  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  1B7 

there  was  a  cfoat  difFercnce  between  the  fifteentli  cen- 
tury  and  tlie  seventeentli.  Riclniiond  was  assured  of 
the  support  of  barons,  each  of  whom  could  bring  an 
army  of  feudal  retainers  into  the  field  ;  and  Richard 
had  not  one  reijiment  of  reo;ular  soldiers.^ 

The  exiles  were  able  to  raise,  partly  from  their  own 
resources  and  partly  from  the  contributions  of  well 
wishers  in  Holland,  a  sum  sufficient  for  the  two  expe- 
ditions. Very  little  was  obtained  from  London.  Six 
thousand  pounds  had  been  expected  thence.  But  in- 
stead of  the  money  came  excuses  from  Wildman,  which 
ought  to  have  opened  the  eyes  of  all  who  were  not 
wilfully  blind.  The  Duke  made  up  the  deficiency  by 
pawning  his  own  jewels  and  those  of  Lady  Wentworth. 
Arms,  ammunition,  and  provisions  were  bought,  and 
several  ships  which  lay  at  Amsterdam  were  freighted.^ 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  most  illustrious  and  the 
most  grossly  injured  man  among  the  British 
exiles  stood  lar  aloof  from  these  rash  counsels. 
John  Locke  hated  tyranny  and  pei'secution  as  a  philos- 
opher;  but  liis  intellect  and  his  temper  preserved  him 
from  the  violence  of  a  partisan.  He  had  lived  on  con- 
fidential terms  with  Shaftesbury,  and  had  thus  incurred 
the  displeasure  of  the  court.  Locke's  prudence  had, 
however,  been  such  that  it  would  have  been  to  little 
purpose  to  bring  him  even  before  the  corrupt  and  par- 
tial tribunals  of  that  age.  In  one  point,  however,  he 
was  vulnerable.  He  was  a  student  of  Christ  Church 
in  the  University  of  Oxford.  It  was  determined  to 
drive  from  that  celebrated  colleire  the  o;rcatest  man 
of  whom  it  could  ever  boast.  But  this  was  not  easy. 
Locke  had,  at  Oxf()rd,  abstained  from  expressing  any 
opinion  on  the  politics  of  the  day.  Spies  had  been 
1  Burnet,  i.  6;il.  2  Grey's  Narrative. 


188  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

set  about  him.  Doctors  of  Divinity  and  Masters  of 
Arts  had  not  been  ashamed  to  perfomi  the  vilest  of 
all  offices,  that  of  watching  the  lips  of  a  companion  in 
order  to  report  his  words  to  his  ruin.  The  conversa- 
tion in  the  hall  had  been  purposely  turned  to  irritating 
topics,  to  the  Exclusion  Bill,  and  to  the  character  of  the 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  but  in  vain.  Locke  neither  broke 
out  nor  dissembled,  but  maintained  such  steady  silence 
and  composure  as  forced  the  tools  of  power  to  own  with 
vexation  that  never  man  was  so  complete  a  master  of 
his  tongue  and  of  his  passions.  When  it  was  found 
that  treachery  could  do  nothing,  arbitrary  power  was 
used.  After  vainly  trying  to  inveigle  Locke  into  a 
fault,  the  government  resolved  to  punish  him  without 
one.  Orders  came  from  Whitehall  that  he  should  be 
ejected  ;  and  those  orders  the  Dean  and  Canons  made 
haste  to  obey. 

Locke  was  travellino;  on  the  Continent  for  his  health 
when  he  learned  that  he  had  been  deprived  of  his  home 
and  of  his  bread  "without  a  trial  or  even  a  notice.  The 
injustice  with  which  he  had  been  treated  would  have 
excused  him  if  he  had  resorted  to  violent  methods  of 
redress.  But  he  was  not  to  be  blinded  by  personal 
resentment :  he  augured  no  good  from  the  schemes  of 
those  who  had  assembled  at  Amsterdam  ;  and  he  quietly 
repaired  to  Utrecht,  where,  while  his  partnei's  in  mis- 
fortune were  planning  their  own  destruction,  he  em- 
ployed himself  in  writing  his  celebrated  Letter  on 
Toleration.^ 

1  Le  Clerc's  Life  of  Locke;  Lord  King's  Life  of  Locke;  Lord  Grenville's 
Oxford  and  Locke.  Locke  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  Anabaptist 
Nicholas  Look,  whose  name  is  spelt  Locke  in  Grey's  Confession,  and  who 
is  mentioned  in  the  Lansdowne  MS.  1152,  and  in  the  Buccleuch  narrative 
appended  to  Mr.  Rose's  dissertation.  I  should  hardly  think  it  necessary  to 
tnake  this  remark,  but  that  the  similarity  of  the  two  names  appears  to  hav« 


J 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  139 

The   English   government  was  early  apprised  that 
something  was  in   agitation   among  the  out-   Preparations 

1  A         •  •  p    -r<        1         1  mailebygov- 

laws.     An  mvasion  ot  Jbnojlfind  seems  not  to  emment  ibr 

,  ^1        1  •  "^'^  defence 

have  been  at  nrst  expected  ;  but  it  was  ap-  of  Scotland. 
prehended  that  Argyle  would  sliortly  appear  in  arms 
among  his  clansmen.  A  proclamation  Avas  accordingly 
issued  directing  that  Scotland  should  be  put  into  a  state 
of  defence.  The  militia  was  ordered  to  be  in  readiness. 
All  the  clans  hostile  to  the  name  of  Campbell  were  set 
in  motion.  John  Murray,  Marquess  of  Athol,  was  ap- 
pointed Loi'd  Lieutenant  of  Argyleshire,  and,  at  the 
head  of  a  great  body  of  his  followers,  occupied  the  cas- 
tle of  Inverary.  Some  suspected  persons  were  arrested. 
Others  were  compelled  to  give  hostages.  Ships  of  war 
were  sent  to  cruise  near  the  isle  of  Bute  ;  and  part 
of  the  army  of  Ireland  was  moved  to  the  coast  of 
Ulster.i 

While  these  preparations  were  making  in  Scotland, 
James  called  into  his  closet  Arnold  Van  Cit-  conrersa- 

-  Ill  •  1      1      •        T-i        1         1  tion  of  .lames 

ters,  who   had   long  resided    m  Lngland   as   with  tue 

A        1  1         /•  I         TT     •        1    I-.  •    '  1     Hutch  am- 

Ambassauor  rrom  the  united  i  rovmces,  and  biissadors. 
Everard  Van  Dykvclt,  who,  after  the  death  of  Charles, 
had  been  sent  by  the  States  General  on  a  special  mis- 
sion of  condolence  and  congratulation.  The  Kino-  said 
that  he  had  received  from  unquestionable  sources  in- 
telligence of  designs  which  were  forming  against  his 
throne  by  his  banished  subjects  in  Holland.  Some  of 
the  exiles  were  cutthroats,  whom  nothing  but  the  spe- 
cial providence  of  God  had  prevented  from  committing 
a  foul  murder  ;  and  among  them  was  the  owner  of  the 
spot  which  had  been  fixed  for  the  butchery.     "  Of  all 

miBled  a  man  so  well  acquainted  with  the  historj' of  those  times  as  Speaker 
Onslow.     See  his  note  on  Burnet,  i.  G29. 

1  Wodrow,  book  iii.  cliap.  ix. ;  London  Gazette,  May  11.  1035;  Barilloo 
May^ 


140  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

men  living,"  said  the  King,  "  Argyle  lias  the  greatest 
means  of  annoying  me  ;  and  of  all  places  Holland  is 
that  whence  a  blow  may  be  best  aimed  against  me." 
The  Dutch  envoys  assured  His  Majesty  that  what  he 
had  said  should  instantly  be  communicated  to  the  gov- 
ernment which  they  represented,  and  expressed  their 
full  confidence  that  every  exertion  would  be  made  to 
satisfy  him.^ 

They  were  justified  in  expressing  this   confidence. 
Ineffectual     Botli  the  Priuce  of  Orange  and  the  States 

attempt  to  ,  .  .  ,      . 

prevtut  Ar-  (jeneral  were,  at  this  time,  most  desirous 
sailing.  that  the  hospitality  of  their  country  should 

not  be  abused  for  purposes  of  which  the  English  gov- 
ernment could  justly  complain.  James  had  lately 
held  language  which  encouraged  the  hope  that  he 
would  not  patiently  submit  to  the  ascendency  of  France. 
It  seemed  probable  that  he  would  consent  to  form  a 
close  alliance  with  the  United  Provinces  and  the  House 
of  Austria.  There  was,  therefore,  at  the  Hague,  an 
extreme  anxiety  to  avoid  all  that  could  give  him  offence. 
The  personal  interest  of  William  was  also  on  this  occa- 
sion identical  with  the  interest  of  his  father  in  law. 

But  the  case  was  one  which  required  rapid  and  vigor- 
ous action  ;  and  the  nature  of  the  Batavian  institutions 
made  such  action  almost  impossible.  The  Union  of 
Utrecht,  rudely  formed,  amidst  the  agonies  of  a  revo- 
lution, for  the  purpose  of  meeting  immediate  exigencies, 
had  never  been  deliberately  revised  and  perfected  in  a 
time  of  tranquillity.  Every  one  of  the  seven  common- 
wealths which  that  Union  had  bound  together  retained 
almost  all  the  rights  of  sovereignty,  and  asserted  those 
rights  punctiliously  against  the  central  government. 
As  the  federal  authorities  had  not  the  means  of  exact* 

1  Register  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  States  General,  May  J^.  1685. 


1«W-]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  141 

ing  prompt  obedience  from  the  provincial  autnorities, 
so  the  provincial  authorities  had  not  the  means  of  ex- 
acting prompt  obedience  from  the  municipal  authorities. 
Holland  alone  contained  eighteen  cities,  each  of  which 
was,  for  many  purposes,  an  independent  state,  jealous 
of  all  interference  from  without.  If  the  rulers  of  such 
a  city  received  from  the  Hague  an  order  which  was  un- 
pleasing  to  them,  they  either  neglected  it  altogether, 
or  executed  it  languidly  and  tardily.  In  some  coun- 
cils, indeed,  the  influence  of  the  Prince  of  Orancre  was 
all  powerful.  But  unfortunately  the  place  w^here  the 
British  exiles  had  congregated,  and  where  their  ships 
had  been  fitted  out,  was  the  rich  and  populous  Amster- 
dam ;  and  the  magistrates  of  Amsterdam  were  the 
heads  of  the  faction  hostile  to  the  federal  government 
and  to  the  House  of  Nassau.  The  naval  administration 
of  the  United  Provinces  was  conducted  by  five  distinct 
boards  of  Admiralty.  One  of  those  boards  sate  at 
Amsterdam,  was  partly  nominated  by  the  authorities 
of  that  city,  and  seems  to  have  been  entirely  animated 
by  their  spirit. 

All  the  endeavours  of  the  federal  government  to  effect 
what  James  desired  were  frustrated  by  the  evasions  of 
the  functionaries  of  Amsterdam,  and  b}^  the  blunders 
of  Colonel  Bevil  Skelton,  who  had  just  arrived  at  the 
Hague  as  Envoy  from  England.  Skelton  had  been 
born  in  Holland  during  the  English  troubles,  and  was 
therefore  supposed  to  be  peculiarly  qualified  for  his 
post ;  ^  but  he  was,  in  truth,  unfit  for  that  and  for  every 
other  diplomatic  situation.  Excellent  judges  of  charac- 
ter pronounced  him  to  be  the  most  shallow,  fickle,  pas- 
sionate, presumptuous,  and  garrulous  of  men.^    He  took 

1  This  is  mentioned  in  his  credentials  dated  on  the  16th  of  March,  1684. 
'  Borirepaux  to  Seignelay,  Feb.  JL..  1686. 


142  mSTORT   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

no  serious  notice  of  the  proceedings  of  the  refugees  till 
three  vessels  which  had  been  equipi)ed  for  the  expedi- 
tion to  Scotland  were  safe  out  of  the  Zuyder  Zee,  till 
the  arms,  ammunition,  and  provisions  were  on  board, 
and  till  the  passengers  had  embarked.  Then,  instead 
of  applying,  as  he  should  have  done,  to  the  States  Gen- 
eral, who  sate  close  to  his  own  door,  he  sent  a  messen- 
ger to  the  magistrates  of  Amsterdam,  with  a  request 
that  the  suspected  ships  might  be  detained.  The  mag- 
istrates of  Amsterdam  answered  that  the  entrance  of 
the  Zuyder  Zee  was  out  of  their  jurisdiction,  and  re- 
ferred him  to  the  federal  government.  It  was  notori- 
ous that  this  was  a  mere  excuse,  and  that,  if  there  had 
been  any  real  wish  at  the  Stadthouse  of  Amsterdam  to 
prevent  Argyle  from  sailing,  no  difficulties  Avould  have 
been  made.  Skelton  now  addressed  himself  to  the 
States  General.  They  showed  every  disposition  to 
comply  with  his  demand,  and,  as  the  case  was  urgent, 
departed  from  the  course  which  they  ordinarily  ob- 
served in  the  transaction  of  business.  On  the  same 
day  on  which  he  made  his  application  to  them,  an  order, 
drawn  in  exact  conformity  with  his  request,  was  de- 
spatched to  the  Admiralty  of  Amsterdam.  But  this 
order,  in  consequence  of  some  misinformation  which  he 
had  received,  did  not  correctly  describe  the  situation 
of  the  ships.  They  were  said  to  be  in  the  TexeL 
They  were  in  the  Vhe.  The  Admiralty  of  Amster- 
dam' made  this  error  a  plea  for  doing  nothing ;  and, 
before  the  error  could  be  rectified,  the  three  ships  had 
sailed.^ 

1  Avaux  Neg.  if^'  May  yt'  May  xl-  1685;  Sir  Patrick  Hume's  Nar- 
rative; Letter  from  the  Admiralty  of  Amsterdam  to  the  States  General, 
dated  June  20.  1685;  Memorial  of  Skelton,  delivered  to  the  States  General 
May  10.  1685. 


1685.1  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  148 

The  last  hours  which  Argyle  passed  on  the  coast  of 
Holland  were  hours  of  great  anxiety.  Near  Departure  of 
him  lay  a  Dutch  man  of  war  whose  broadside  uoiiand. 
would  in  a  moment  have  put  an  end  to  his  expedition. 
Round  his  little  fleet  a  boat  was  rowing,  in  which  were 
some  persons  with  telescopes  whom  he  suspected  to 
be  spies.  But  no  effectual  step  was  taken  for  the  pur- 
pose of  detaining  him  ;  and  on  the  afternoon  of  the 
se  cond  of  May  he  stood  out  to  sea  before  a  favourable 
breeze. 

The  voyage  was  prosperous.  On  the  sixth  the  Ork- 
neys were  in  sight.  Argyle  very  unwisely  anchored 
off  Kirkwall,  and  allowed  two  of  his  followers  to  go  on 
shore  there.  The  Bishop  ordered  them  to  be  arrested. 
The  refligees  proceeded  to  hold  a  long  and  animated 
debate  on  this  misadventure :  for,  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  their  expedition,  however  languid  and 
irresolute  their  conduct  might  be,  they  never  in  debate 
wanted  spirit  or  perseverance.  Some  were  for  an  at- 
tack on  Kirkwall.  Some  were  for  proceeding  without 
delay  to  Argyleshire.  At  last  the  Earl  seized  some 
gentlemen  who  lived  near  the  coast  of  the  island,  and 
proposed  to  the  Bishop  an  exchange  of  prisoners.  The 
Bishop  returned  no  answer ;  and  the  fleet,  after  losing 
three  days,  sailed  away. 

This  delay  was  full  of  danger.  It  was  speedily 
known  at  Edinburgh  that  the  rebel  squadron  y^  ,.„„,,  ;„ 
had  touched  at  the  Orkneys.  Troops  were  ^«»""''- 
instantly  put  in  motion.  When  the  Earl  reached  his 
own  province,  he  found  that  preparations  had  been  made 
to  repel  him.  At  Dunstaffnage  he  sent  his  second  son 
Charles  on  shore  to  call  the  Campbells  to  arms.  But 
Charles  returned  with  gloomy  tidings.  The  herdsmen 
and  fishermen  were  indeed  ready  to  rally  round  Mac 

vol,.  II.  10 


144  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  F. 

Galium  More  ;  but,  of  the  heads  of  the  clan,  some 
were  in  confinement,  and  others  had  fled.  Those  gen- 
tlemen who  remained  at  their  homes  were  either  well 
affected  to  the  government  or  afraid  of  moving,  and  re- 
fused even  to  see  the  son  of  their  chief.  From  Dun- 
staffnage  the  small  armament  proceeded  to  Campbell- 
town,  near  the  southern  extremity  of  the  peninsula  of 
Kintyre.  Here  the  Earl  published  a  manifesto,  drawn 
up  in  Holland,  under  the  direction  of  the  Committee, 
by  James  Stewart,  a  Scotch  advocate,  whose  pen  was, 
a  few  months  later,  employed  in  a  very  different  way. 
In  this  paper  were  set  forth,  with  a  strength  of  lan- 
guage sometimes  approaching  to  scurrility,  many  real 
and  some  imaginary  grievances.  It  was  hinted  that 
the  late  King  had  died  by  poison.  A  chief  object 
of  the  expedition  was  declared  to  be  the  entire  sup- 
pression, not  only  of  Popery,  but  of  Prelacy,  which 
was  termed  the  most  bitter  root  and  offspring  of 
Popery ;  and  all  good  Scotchmen  were  exhorted  to 
do  valiantly  for  the  cause  of  their  country  and  of  their 
God. 

Zealous  as  Argyle  was  for  what  he  considered  as 
pure  religion,  he  did  not  scruple  to  practise  one  rite 
\ialf  Popish  and  half  Pagan.  The  mysterious  cross  of 
yew,  first  set  on  fire,  and  then  quenched  in  the  blood  of 
a  goat,  was  sent  forth  to  summon  all  the  Campbells,  from 
sixteen  to  sixty.  The  isthmus  of  Tarbet  was  appointed 
for  the  place  of  gathering.  The  muster,  though  small 
indeed  when  compared  with  what  it  would  have  been 
if  the  spirit  and  strength  of  the  clan  had  been  un- 
broken, was  still  formidable.  The  whole  force  as- 
sembled amounted  to  about  eighteen  hundred  men. 
Argyle  divided  his  mountaineers  into-  three  regiments, 
and  proceeded  to  appoint  officers. 


1685.1  JAMES   THE  SECOND.  145 

The  bickerings  which  had  begun  in  Holland  had 
never  been  intermitted  during  the  whole  u;s  disputes 
course  or  the  expedition  ;  but  at  iarbet  tliey  lowers. 
became  more  violent  than  ever.  The  Committee  wished 
to  interfere  even  with  the  patriarchal  dominion  of  the 
E:irl  over  the  Campbells,  and  would  not  allow  him  to 
settle  the  military  rank  of  his  kinsmen  by  his  own  au- 
thority. While  these  disputatious  meddlers  tried  to 
wrest  from  him  his  power  over  the  Higlilands,  they 
carried  on  their  own  correspondence  with  the  Lowlands, 
and  received  and  sent  letters  which  were  never  com- 
municated to  the  nominal  General.  Hume  and  his 
confederates  had  reserved  to  themselves  the  superin- 
tendence of  the  stores,  and  conducted  this  important 
part  of  the  administration  of  war  with  a  laxity  hardly 
to  be  distinguished  from  dishonesty,  suffered  the  arms 
to  be  spoiled,  wasted  the  provisions,  and  lived  riotously 
at  a  time  when  they  ought  to  have  set  to  all  beneath 
them  an  example  of  abstemiousness. 

The  great  question  was  whether  the  Highlands  or 
the  Lowlands  should  be  the  seat  of  war.  The  Earl's 
first  object  was  to  establish  his  authority  over  his  own 
domains,  to  drive  out  the  hivading  clans  which  had 
been  poured  from  Perthshire  into  Argyleshire,  and  to 
take  possession  of  the  ancient  seat  of  his  family  at 
Inverary.  He  might  then  hope  to  have  four  or  five 
thousand  claymores  at  his  command.  With  such  a 
force  he  would  be  able  to  defend  that  wild  country 
against  the  whole  power  of  the  kingdom  of  Scotland, 
and  would  also  have  secured  an  excellent  base  for 
offensive  operations.  This  seems  to  have  been  the 
wisest  course  open  to  him.  Rumbold,  who  had  been 
trained  in  an  excellent  military  school,  and  who,  as  an 
Englishman,   might    be   supposed    to   be    an   impartial 


146  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

umpire  between  the  Scottish  factions,  did  all  ni  his 
power  to  strengthen  the  Earl's  hands.  But  Hume  and 
Cochrane  were  utterly  impracticable.  Their  jealousy 
of  Argyle  was,  in  truth,  stronger  than  their  wish  for 
the  success  of  the  expedition.  They  saw  that,  among 
his  own  mountains  and  lakes,  and  at  the  head  of  an 
army  chiefly  composed  of  his  OAvn  tribe,  he  would  be 
able  to  bear  down  their  opposition,  and  to  exercise  the 
liill  authority  of  a  General.  They  muttered  that  the 
only  men  who  had  the  good  cause  at  heart  were  the 
Lowlanders,  and  that  the  Campbells  took  up  arms 
neither  for  liberty  nor  for  the  Church  of  God,  but  for 
Mac  Galium  More  alone.  Cochrane  declared  that  he 
would  go  to  Ayrshire  if  he  went  by  himself,  and  with 
nothing  but  a  pitchfork  in  his  hand.  Argyle,  after  long 
resistance,  consented,  against  his  better  judgment,  to 
divide  his  little  army.  He  remained  with  Rumbold  in 
the  Highlands.  Cochrane  and  Hume  were  at  the  head 
of  the  force  which  sailed  to  invade  the  Lowlands. 

Ayrshire  was  Cochrane's  object :  but  the  coast  of 
Ayrshire  was  guarded  by  English  frigates ;  and  the  ad- 
venturers were  under  the  necessity  of  running  up  the 
estuary  of  the  Clyde  to  Greenock,  then  a  small  fishing 
village  consisting  of  a  single  row  of  thatched  hovels, 
now  a  great  and  flourishing  port,  of  which  the  customs 
amount  to  more  than  five  times  the  whole  revenue 
wdiich  the  Stuarts  derived  from  the  kingdom  of  Scot- 
land. A  party  of  militia  lay  at  Greenock  :  but  Coch- 
rane, who  wanted  provisions,  was  determined  to  land. 
Hume  objected.  Cochrane  was  peremptory,  and  or- 
dered an  officer,  named  Elphinstone,  to  take  twenty 
men  in  a  boat  to  the  shore.  But  the  wrangling  spirit 
of  the  leaders  had  infected  all  ranks.  Elphinstone 
answered  that  he  was  bound  to  obey  only  reasonable 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  14? 

commands,  that  he  considei*ed  this  command  as  mirea- 
sonable,  and,  in  short,  that  he  would  not  go.  Major 
Fullarton,  a  brave  man,  esteemed  by  all  parties,  but 
})eculiarly  attached  to  Argyle,  undertook  to  land  with 
only  twelve  men,  and  did  so  in  spite  of  a  fire  from  the 
coast.  A  slio;ht  skirmish  followed.  The  militia  fell 
back.  Cochrane  entered  Greenock  and  procured  a 
supply  of  meal,  but  found  no  disposition  to  insurrection 
among  the  people. 

In  fact,  the  state  of  public  feeling  in  Scotland  was 
not  such  as  the  exiles,  misled  bv  the  infatua-  Temper  of 
tion  common  in  all  ages  to  exiles,  had  sup-  nation. 
posed  it  to  be.  The  government  was,  indeed,  hateful 
and  hated.  But  the  malecontents  were  divided  into 
j)arties  which  were  almost  as  hostile  to  one  another  as 
to  their  rulers  ;  nor  Avas  any  of  those  parties  eager  to 
join  the  invaders.  Many  thought  that  the  insurrection 
had  no  chance  of  success.  The  spirit  of  many  had 
been  efiectually  broken  by  long  and  cruel  oppression. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  class  of  enthusiasts  who  were 
little  in  the  habit  of  calculating  chances,  and  whom 
oppression  had  not  tamed  but  maddened.  But  these 
men  saw  little  difierence  between  Argyle  and  James. 
Their  wrath  had  been  heated  to  such  a  temperature 
that  what  every  body  else  would  have  called  boiling 
zeal  seemed  to  them  Laodicean  lukewarmness.  The 
Earl's  past  life  had  been  stained  by  what  they  regarded 
as  the  vilest  apostasy.  The  very  Highlanders  whom  he 
now  summoned  to  extirpate  Prelacy  he  had  a  few  years 
betbre  summoned  to  defend  it.  And  were  slaves  who 
knew  nothing  and  cared  nothing  about  religion,  who 
were  ready  to  fight  for  synodical  government,  for  Epis- 
copacy, for  Popery,  ju.st  as  Mac  Galium  More  might  be 
pleased  to  command,  fit  allies  for  the  people  of  God  ? 


148  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

The  manifesto,  indecent  and  intolerant  as  was  its  tone, 
was,  in  the  view  of  these  fanatics,  a  cowardly  and 
worldly  performance.  A  settlement  such  as  Argyle 
would  have  made,  such  as  was  afterwards  made  by  a 
mightier  and  happier  deliverer,  seemed  to  them  not 
vrorth  a  struggle.  They  wanted  not  only  freedom  of 
conscience  for  themselves,  but  absolute  dominion  over 
the  consciences  of  others,  not  only  the  Presbyterian 
doctrine,  polity,  and  worship,  but  the  Covenant  in  its 
utmost  rigour.  Nothing  would  content  them  but  tliat 
every  end  for  which  civil  society  exists  should  be  sac- 
rificed to  the  ascendency  of  a  theological  system.  One 
who  believed  no  form  of  church  government  to  be  worth 
a  breach  of  Christian  charity,  and  who  recommended 
comprehension  and  toleration,  was,  in  their  phrase, 
halting  between  Jehovah  and  Baal.  One  who  con- 
demned such  acts  as  the  murder  of  Cardinal  Beatoun 
and  Archbishop  Sharpe  fell  into  the  same  sin  for  which 
Saul  had  been  rejected  from  being  King  over  Israel. 
All  the  rules,  by  which,  among  civilised  and  Christian 
men,  the  horrors  of  war  are  mitigated,  were  abomina- 
tions in  the  sight  of  the  Lord.  Quarter  was  to  be 
neither  taken  nor  given.  A  Malay  running  a-muck, 
a  mad  dog  pursued  by  a  crowd,  were  the  models  to  be 
imitated  by  warriors  fighting  in  just  selfdefence.  To 
reasons  such  as  guide  the  conduct  of  statesmen  and 
generals  the  minds  of  these  zealots  were  absolutely  im- 
pervious. That  a  man  should  A^enture  to  urge  such 
reasons  was  sufficient  evidence  that  he  was  not  one  of 
the  faithfiil.  If  the  divine  blessing  were  withheld,  little 
would  be  eifected  by  crafty  politicians,  by  veteran  cap- 
tains, by  cases  of  arms  from  Holland,  or  by  regiments 
of  unregenerate  Ctdts  from  the  mountains  of  Lorn.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  Lord's  time  were  indeed  come, 


1685.)  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  149 

he  could  still,  as  of  old,  cause  the  foolish  things  of  the 
world  to  confound  the  wise»  and  could  save  alike  by 
many  and  by  few.  The  broadswords  of  Athol  and  the 
bayonets  of  Claverhouse  would  be  put  to  rout  by  weap- 
ons as  insignificant  as  the  sling  of  David  or  the  pitcher 
of  Gideon.^ 

Cochrane,  having  found  it  impossible  to  raise  the 
population  on  the  south  of  the  Clyde,  rejoined  Argyle, 
who  Avas  in  the  island  of  Bute.  The  Earl  now  again 
proposed  to  make  an  attempt  upon  Inverary.  Again 
he  encountered  a  pertinacious  opposition.  The  seamen 
sided  with  Hume  and  Cochrane.  The  Highlanders 
were  absolutely  at  the  command  of  their  chieftain. 
There  was  reason  to  fear  that  the  two  parties  would 
come  to  blows  ;  and  the  dread  of  such  a  disaster  in- 
duced the  Committee  to  make  some  concession.  The 
castle  of  Ealan  Ghierig,  situated  at  the  mouth  of  Loch 
Riddan,  was  selected  to  be  the  chief  place  of  arms. 
The  military  stores  were  disembarked  there.  The 
sqviach'on  was  moored  close  to  the  walls  in  a  place  where 
it  was  protected  by  rocks  and  shallows  such  as,  it  Avas 
thought,  no  fi-igate  could  pass.  Outworks  were  thrown 
up.  A  battery  was  planted  with  some  small  guns 
taken  from  the  ships.  The  command  of  the  fort  was 
most  unwisely  given  to  Elphinstone,  who  had  already 
proved  himself  much  more  disposed  to  argue  with  his 
commnnders  than  to  fight  the  enemy. 

And  now,  during  a  few  hours,  there  was  some  show 
of  vigour.  Rumbold  took  the  castle  of  Ardkinglass. 
The  Earl  skirmished  successfully  with  Athol's  troops, 

1  If  any  person  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  I  have  exaggerated  the  absunl- 
itj'  and  ferocity  of  these  men,  I  would  advise  him  to  read  two  hooks,  wliich 
will  convince  him  that  I  have  rather  softened  than  overcharged  the  por- 
trait, the  "  Hind  let  loose,"  and  "Faithful  Contendings  displayed." 


150  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Oh.  V 

and  was  about  to  advance  on  Inverary,  when  alarming 
news  from  the  ships  and  factions  in  the  Committee 
forced  him  to  turn  back.  The  King's  frigates  had  come 
nearer  to  Ealan  Ghierig  than  had  been  thought  pos- 
sible. The  Lowland  gentlemen  positively  refiised  to 
advance  further  into  the  Highlands.  Argyle  hastened 
back  to  Ealan  Ghierig.  There  he  proposed  to  make 
an  attack  on  the  frigates.  His  ships,  indeed,  were  ill 
fitted  for  such  an  encounter.  But  they  M'^ould  have 
been  supported  by  a  flotilla  of  thirty  large  fishing  boats, 
each  well  manned  with  armed  Highlanders.  The  Com- 
mittee,  however,  refused  to  listen  to  this  plan,  and 
effectually  counteracted  it  by  raising  a  mutiny  among 
the  sailors. 

All  was  now  confusion  and  despondency.  The  pro- 
visions had  been  so  ill  managed  by  the  Committee  that 
there  was  no  longer  food  for  the  troops.  The  High- 
landers consequently  deserted  by  hundreds  ;  and  the 
Earl,  brokenhearted  by  his  misfortunes,  yielded  to  the 
urgency  of  those  who  still  pertinaciously  insisted  that 
he  should  march  into  the  Lowlands. 

The  little  army  therefore  hastened  to  the  shore  of 
Loch  Long,  passed  that  inlet  by  night  in  boats,  and 
landed  in  Dumbartonshire.  Hither,  on  the  following 
morning,  came  news  that  the  frigates  had  forced  a  pas- 
sage, that  all  the  Earl's  ships  had  been  taken,  and  that 
Elphinstone  had  fled  from  Ealan  Ghierig  without  a 
blow,  leaving  the  castle  and  stores  to  the  enemy. 

All  that  remained  was  to  invade  the  Lowlands  under 
every  disadvantage.  Argyle  resolved  to  make  a  bold 
push  for  Glasgow.  But,  as  soon  as  this  resolution  was 
announced,  the  very  men,  who  had,  up  to  that  moment, 
been  urging  him  to  hasten  into  the  low  country,  took 
fright,  argued,  remonstrated,  and,  when  argument  and 


less.]  JAME3   THE   SECOND.  151 

remonstrance  proved  vain,  laid  a  scheme  for  seizing 
the  boats,  making  their  own  escape,  and  leaving  their 
General  and  his  clansmen  to  conquer  or  perish  unaided. 
This  scheme  failed  ;  and  the  poltroons  who  had  formed 
it  were  compelled  to  share  with  braver  men  the  risks 
of  the  last  venture. 

During  the  march  through  the  country  which  lies 
between  Loch  Long  and  Loch  Lomond,  the  insurgents 
were  constantly  infested  by  parties  of  militia.  Some 
skirmishes  took  place,  in  which  the  Earl  had  the  ad- 
vantage ;  but  the  bands  which  he  repelled,  falling  back 
before  him,  spread  the  tidings  of  his  approach,  and, 
soon  after  he  had  crossed  the  river  Leven,  he  found  a 
strong  body  of  regular  and  ix'regular  troops  prepared  to 
encounter  him. 

He  was  for  giving  battle.  Ayloffe  was  of  the  same 
opinion.  Hume,  on  the  other  hand,  declared  that  to 
engage  the  enemy  would  be  madness.  He  saw  one 
regiment  in  scarlet.  More  might  be  behind.  To  attack 
such  a  force  was  to  rush  on  certain  death.  The  best 
course  was  to  remain  quiet  till  night,  and  then  to  give 
the  enemy  the  slip. 

A  sharp  altercation  followed,  which  was  with  diffi- 
culty quieted  by  the  mediation  of  Rumbold.  It  was 
now  evening.  The  hostile  armies  encamped  at  no  great 
distance  from  each  other.  The  Eai'l  ventured  to  pro- 
pose a  night  attack,  and  was  again  overruled. 

Since  it  was  determined  not  to  fiirht,  nothino-  was 
left  but  to  take  the  step  which  Hume  had  Arsyie's 
recommended.  There  Avas  a  chance,  that  by  perscd. 
decamping  secretly,  and  hastening  all  night  across 
heaths  and  morasses,  the  Earl  might  gain  many  miles 
on  the  enemy,  and  might  reach  Glasgow  without  fur- 
ther obstruction.     The  watch  fires  were  left  burning  • 


152  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

and  tlie  march  began.  And  now  disaster  followed  dis- 
aster fast.  The  guides  mistook  the  track  across  the 
moors,  and  led  the  army  into  boggy  ground.  Military 
order  could  not  be  preserved  by  undisciplined  and  dis- 
heartened soldiers  under  a  dark  sky,  and  on  a  treacher- 
ous and  uneven  soil.  Panic  after  panic  spread  through 
the  broken  ranks.  Every  sight  and  sound  was  thought 
to  indicate  the  approach  of  pursuers.  Some  of  the  offi- 
cers contributed  to  spread  the  terror  which  it  was  their 
duty  to  calm.  The  army  had  become  a  mob  ;  and  the 
mob  melted  fast  away.  Great  numbers  fled  under  cover 
of  the  night.  Rumbold  and  a  few  other  brave  men 
whom  no  danger  could  have  scared  lost  their  way,  and 
were  unable  to  rejoin  the  main  body.  When  the  day 
broke,  only  five  hundred  fugitives,  wearied  and  dis- 
pirited, assembled  at  Kilpatrick. 

All  thought  of  prosecuting  the  war  was  at  an  end : 
and  it  was  plain  that  the  chiefs  of  the  expedition  would 
have  sufficient  difficulty  in  escaping  with  their  lives. 
They  fled  in  diffi^rent  directions.  Hume  reached  the 
Continent  in  safety.  Cochrane  was  taken  and  sent  up 
Argyiea  ^o  Loudou.  Argyle  hoped  to  find  a  secure 
pnsouer.  asylum  under  the  roof  of  one  of  his  old  ser- 
vants who  lived  near  Kilpatrick.  But  this  hope  was 
disappointed  ;  and  he  was  forced  to  cross  the  Clyde. 
He  assumed  the  dress  of  a  peasant,  and  pretended  to 
be  the  guide  of  Major  Fullarton,  whose  courageous 
fidelity  was  proof  to  all  danger.  The  friends  journeyed 
together  through  Renfrewshire  as  far  as  Inchinnan. 
At  that  place  the  Black  Cart  and  the  White  Cart,  two 
streams  which  now  flow  through  prosperous  towns,  and 
tui'n  the  wheels  of  many  factories,  but  which  then  held 
their  quiet  course  through  moors  and  sheepwalks,  mingle 
before  they  join  the  Clyde.     The  only  ford  by  which 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  153 

the  travellers  could  cross  was  guarded  by  a  party  of 
militia.  Some  questions  were  asked.  Fullarton  tried 
to  draw  suspicion  on  himself,  in  order  that  his  com- 
panion might  escape  unnoticed.  But  the  minds  of  the 
questioners  misgave  them  that  the  guide  was  not  the 
rude  clown  that  he  seemed.  They  laid  hands  on  him. 
He  broke  loose  and  sprang  into  the  water,  but  was  in- 
stantly chased.  He  stood  at  bay  for  a  short  time  against 
five  assailants.  But  he  had  no  arms  except  his  pocket 
pistols,  and  they  were  so  wet,  in  consequence  of  his 
plunge,  that  they  would  not  go  oiF.  He  was  struck  to 
the  ground  with  a  broadsword,  and  secured. 

He  owned  iiimself  to  be  the  Earl  of  Argyle,  probably 
in  the  hope  that  his  great  name  would  excite  the  awe 
and  pity  of  those  who  had  seized  Iiim.  And  indeed  they 
were  much  moved.  For  they  were  plain  Scotchmen  of 
humble  rank,  and,  though  in  arms  for  the  crown,  prob- 
ably cherished  a  preference  for  the  Calvinistic  church 
government  and  worship,  and  had  been  accustomed  to 
I'cverence  their  captive  as  the  head  of  an  illustrious 
house  and  as  a  champion  of  the  Protestant  religion. 
But,  though  they  were  evidently  touched,  and  though 
some  of  them  even  wept,  they  were  not  disposed  to  re- 
linquish a  large  reward  and  to  incur  the  vengeance  of 
an  implacable  government.  They  therefore  conveyed 
their  prisoner  to  Renfrew.  The  man  who  bore  the 
chief  part  in  the  arrest  was  named  Riddell.  On  this 
account  the  whole  race  of  Riddclls  was,  durino:  more 
than  a  century,  held  in  abhorrence  by  the  great  tribe 
of  Campbell.  Within  living  memory,  when  a  Riddell 
visited  a  fair  in  Argyleshire,  he  found  it  necessary  to 
assume  a  false  name. 

And  now  commenced  the  brightest  part  of  Argyle's 
sareer.     His  enterprise  had  hitherto  brought  on  him 


154  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V, 

nothing  but  reproach  and  derision.  His  great  error 
was  that  he  did  not  resolutely  refuse  to  accept  the 
name  without  the  power  of  a  general.  Had  he  re- 
mained quietly  at  his  retreat  in  Friesland,  he  would 
in  a  few  years  have  been  recalled  with  honour  to  his 
country,  and  would  have  been  conspicuous  among  the 
ornaments  and  the  props  of  constitutional  monarchy. 
Had  he  conducted  his  expedition  according  to  his  own 
views,  and  carried  with  him  no  followers  but  such  as 
were  prepared  implicitly  to  obey  all  his  orders,  he 
might  possibly  have  effected  something  great.  For 
what  he  wanted  as  a  captain  seems  to  have  been,  not 
courage,  nor  activity,  nor  skill,  but  simply  authority. 
He  should  have  known  that  of  all  wants  this  is  the 
most  fatal.  Armies  have  triumphed  under  leaders  who 
possessed  no  very  eminent  qualifications.  But  what 
army  commanded  by  a  debating  club  ever  escaped  dis- 
comfiture and  disgrace  ? 

The  great  calamity  which  had  fallen  on  Argyle  had 
this  advantage,  that  it  enabled  him  to  show,  by  proofs 
not  to  be  mistaken,  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  From 
the  day  when  he  quitted  Friesland  to  the  day  when  his 
followers  separated  at  Kilpatrick,  he  had  never  been  a 
free  agent.  He  had  borne  the  responsibility  of  a  long 
series  of  measures  which  his  judgment  disapproved. 
Now  at  length  he  stood  alone.  Captivity  had  restored 
to  him  the  noblest  kind  of  liberty,  the  liberty  of  gov- 
erning himself  in  all  his  words  and  actions  according 
to  his  own  sense  of  the  right  and  of  the  becoming. 
From  that  moment  he  became  as  one  inspired  with 
new  wisdom  and  virtue.  His  intellect  seemed  to  be 
strengthened  and  concentrated,  his  moral  character  to 
be  at  once  elevated  and  softened.  The  insolence  of 
the  conquerors  spared  nothing  that  could  try  the  tem- 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  155 

per  of  a  man  proud  of  ancient  nobility  and  of  patri 
arclial  dominion.  The  prisoner  was  dragged  through 
Edinburgh  in  triumph.  He  walked  on  foot,  bare- 
headed, up  the  whole  length  of  that  stately  street 
which,  overshadowed  by  dark  and  gigantic  piles  of 
stone,  leads  from  Holvrood  House  to  the  Castle.  Be- 
fore  him  marched  the  hangman,  bearing  the  ghastly 
instrument  which  was  to  be  used  at  the  quartering 
block.  The  victorious  party  had  not  forgotten  that, 
thirty-five  yeai's  before  this  time,  the  father  of  Argyle 
had  been  at  the  head  of  the  faction  which  put  Mont- 
rose to  death.  Before  that  event  the  houses  of  Graham 
and  Cam[)bell  had  borne  no  love  to  each  other  ;  and 
they  had  ever  since  been  at  deadly  feud.  Care  was 
taken  that  the  prisoner  should  pass  through  the  same 
irate  and  the  same  streets  through  which  Montrose  had 
been  led  to  the  same  doom.^  When  the  Earl  reached 
the  Castle  his  legs  were  put  in  irons,  and  he  was  in- 
formed that  he  had  but  a  few  days  to  live.  It  had 
been  determined  not  to  brinjj  him  to  trial  for  his  recent 
offence,  but  to  put  him  to  death  under  the  sentence 
pronounced  against  him  several  years  before,  a  sentence 
so  flagitiously  unjust  that  the  most  servile  and  obdurate 
lawyers  of  that  bad  age  could  not  speak  of  it  without 
shame. 

But  neither  the  ignominious  procession  up  the  High 
Street,  nor  the  near  view  of  death,  had  power  to  dis- 
turb the  gentle  and  majestic  patience  of  Argyle.  His 
fortitude  was  tried  by  a  still  more  severe  test.  A  j)aj)er 
of  interrogatories  was  laid  before  him  by  order  of  the 
Privj' Council.     He  replied  to  those  questions  to  which 

1  A  few  words  which  were  in  the  first  five  editions  have  been  omitted  in 
iViis  ])late.  IKtc  and  in  iinotlicr  passage  I  had,  as  Mr.  Aytoiin  has  ob.served, 
iiiisiaUcn  the  City  (hiards,  «hi«ii  were  conuiiandod  hy  an  ollici.T  naukuj 
(iialiaiii,  ('(ir  tlic  I 'rairouns  ol'  (^iialiani  ut'  Claverhouse. 


156  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Cir.  V 

lie  could  reply  without  clangor  to  any  of  his  friends, 
and  refused  to  say  more.  He  was  told  that  unless  he 
returned  fuller  answers  he  should  be  put  to  the  torture. 
James,  who  was  doubtless  sorry  that  he  could  not  feast 
his  own  eyes  with  the  sight  of  Argyle  in  the  boots,  sent 
down  to  Edinburgh  positive  orders  that  nothing  should 
be  omitted  which  could  wring  out  of  the  traitor  in- 
formation against  all  who  had  been  concerned  in  the 
treason.  But  menaces  were  vain.  With  torments 
and  death  in  immediate  prospect,  Mac  Galium  More 
thought  far  less  of  himself  than  of  his  poor  clansmen. 
"  I  was  busy  this  day,"  he  wrote  from  his  cell,  "  treat- 
ing for  them,  and  in  some  hopes.  But  this  evening 
orders  came  that  I  must  die  upon  Monday  or  Tuesday  ; 
and  I  am  to  be  put  to  the  torture  if  I  answer  not  all 
questions  upon  oath.  Yet  I  hope  God  shall  support 
me." 

The  torture  was  not  inflicted.  Perhaps  the  magna- 
nimity of  the  victim  had  moved  the  conquerors  to  un- 
wonted compassion.  He  himself  remarked  that  at  first 
they  had  been  very  harsh  to  him,  but  that  they  soon 
began  to  treat  him  with  respect  and  kindness.  God, 
he  said,  had  melted  their  hearts.  It  is  certain  that  he 
did  not,  to  save  himself  from  the  utmost  cruelty  of  his 
enemies,  betray  any  of  his  friends.  On  the  last  morn- 
ing of  his  hfe  he  wrote  these  words  :  "  I  have  named 
none  to  their  disadvantage.  I  thank  God  he  hath  sup- 
ported me  wonderfriUy." 

He  composed  his  own  epitaph,  a  short  poem,  full  of 
meaning  and  spirit,  simple  and  forcible  in  style,  and 
not  contemptible  in  versification.  In  this  little  piece 
he  complained  that,  though  his  enemies  had  repeatedl^i 
decreed  his  death,  his  friends  had  been  still  more  cruel. 
A  comment  on  these  expressions  is  to  be  found  in  a  let- 
ter which  he  addressed  to  a  lady  residisig  in  Holland. 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  157 

She  liad  furnislied  him  with  a  large  sura  of  money  for 
his  expedition,  and  he  thought  her  entitled  to  a  full 
explanation  of  the  causes  which  had  led  to  his  failure. 
He  acquitted  his  coadjutors  of  treachery,  but  described 
their  folly,  their  ignorance,  and  their  factious  perverse- 
ness,  in  terms  which  their  own  testimony  has  since 
})roved  to  have  been  richly  deserved.  He  afterwards 
doubted  whether  he  had  not  used  lano-uao-e  too  severe 
to  become  a  dying  Christian,  and,  in  a  separate  paper, 
begged  his  fi-iend  to  suppress  what  he  had  said  of  these 
men.  "  Only  this  I  must  acknowledge,"  he  mildly 
added  ;  "  they  were  not  governable." 

Most  of  his  few  remaining  hours  were  passed  in  de- 
votion, and  in  aftectionate  intercourse  with  some  mem- 
bers of  his  family.  He  professed  no  repentance  on  ac- 
count of  his  last  enterprise,  but  bewailed,  with  great 
emotion,  his  former  com})liance  in  spiritual  things  with 
the  pleasure  of  the  government.  He  had,  he  said,  been 
justly  punished.  One  who  had  so  long  been  guilty  of 
coAvardice  and  dissimulation  was  not  worthy  to  be  the 
instrument  of  salvation  to  the  State  and  Church.  Yet 
the  cause,  lie  frequently  repeated,  was  the  cause  of 
God,  and  would  assuredly  triumph.  "  I  do  not,"  he 
said,  "  take  on  myself  to  be  a  prophet.  But  I  have  a 
strong  impression  on  my  spirit,  that  deliverance  Avill 
come  very  suddenly."  It  is  not  strange  that  some 
zealous  Presbyterians  should  have  laid  up  his  saying 
in  their  hearts,  and  should,  at  a  later  period,  have  at- 
tributed it  to   divine  inspiration. 

So  effectually  had  religious  faith  and  hope,  cooperat- 
ing with  natural  courage  and  equanimity,  composed  his 
sjHrits  that,  on  the  very  day  on  which  he  Avas  to  die, 
he  dined  with  appetite,  conversed  with  gaiety  at  table, 
and,  after  his  last  meal,  lay  down,  as  he  Avas  wont,  to 


158  HISTORY   OP    ENGLAND,  [Ch.  V. 

take  a  short  slumber,  in  order  that  his  body  and  mind 
might  be  in  full  vii^our  when  he  should  mount  the  seal- 
fold.  At  this  time  one  of  the  Lords  of  the  Council, 
who  had  probably  been  bred  a  Presbyterian,  and  had 
been  seduced  by  interest  to  join  in  oppressing  the 
Church  of  which  he  had  once  been  a  member,  came 
to  the  Castle  with  a  message  from  his  brethren,  and  de- 
manded admittance  to  the  Eai'l.  It  was  answered  that 
the  Earl  was  asleep.  The  Privy  Councillor  thought 
'hat  this  was  a  subterfuge,  and  insisted  on  entering. 
The  door  of  the  cell  was  softly  opened ;  and  there  lay 
Argyle  on  the  bed,  sleeping,  in  his  irons,  the  placid 
sleep  of  infancy.  The  conscience  of  the  renegade  smote 
him.  He  turned  away  sick  at  heart,  ran  out  of  the 
Castle,  and  took  refuge  in  the  dwelling  of  a  lady  of  his 
family  who  lived  hard  by.  There  he  flung  himself  on 
a  couch,  and  gave  himself  up  to  an  agony  of  remorse 
and  shame.  His  kinswoman,  alarmed  by  his  looks 
and  groans,  thought  that  he  had  been  taken  with  sud- 
den illness,  and  begged  him  to  drink  a  cup  of  sack. 
"  No,  no,"  he  said  ;  "  that  will  do  me  no  good."  She 
prayed  him  to  tell  her  what  had  disturbed  him.  "  I 
have  been,"  he  said,  "  in  Argyle's  prison.  I  have  seen 
him  within  an  hour  of  eternity,  sleeping  as  sweetly  as 

ever  man  did.     But  as  for  me ." 

And  now  the  Earl  had  risen  from  his  bed,  and  had 
prepared  himself  for  what  was  yet  to  be  endured.  Ho 
was  first  brought  down  the  High  Street  to  the  Council 
House,  where  he  was  to  remain  during  the  short  in- 
terval which  was  still  to  elapse  before  the  execution. 
During  that  interval  he  asked  for  pen  and  ink,  and 
wrote  to  his  wife.  "  Dear  heart,  God  is  unchangeable. 
He  hath  always  been  good  and  gracious  to  me;  and  no 
})lace  alters  it.  Forgive  me  all  my  faults  ;  and  now 
comfort  thyself  in  him,  in  whom  only  true  comfoit  is 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  159 

to  be  found.     The  Lord  be  with  thee,  bless  and  com- 
fort thee,  mv  dearest.     Adieu." 

It  was  now  time  to  leave  the  Council  House.  The 
divines  who  attended  tlie  prisoner  were  not  Hisexccu- 
of  his  own  persuasion  ;  but  he  listened  to  "°"' 
them  with  civiHtj,  and  exhorted  them  to  caution  their 
flocks  against  those  doctrines  which  all  Protestant 
churches  unite  in  condemning.  He  mounted  the  scaf- 
fold, where  the  rude  old  guillotine  of  Scotland,  called 
the  Maiden,  awaited  him,  and  addressed  the  people  in 
a  speech,  tinctured  with  the  peculiar  phraseology  of 
his  sect,  but  breathing  the  spirit  of  serene  piety.  His 
enemies,  he  said,  he  forgave,  as  he  hoped  to  be  for- 
given. Only  a  single  acrimonious  expression  escaped 
him.  One  of  the  episcopal  clergymen  who  attended 
him  went  to  the  edge  of  the  scaffold,  and  called  out  in 
a  loud  voice,  "  My  Lord  dies  a  Protestant."  "  Yes," 
said  the  Earl,  stepping  forward,  "  and  not  only  a  Prot- 
estant, but  with  a  heart  hatred  of  Popery,  of  Prelacy, 
and  of  all  superstition."  He  then  embraced  his  friends, 
])ut  into  their  hands  some  tokens  of  remembrance  for 
his  wife  and  children,  kneeled  down,  laid  his  head  on 
the  block,  prayed  during  a  few  minutes,  and  gave  the 
sio-nal  to  the  executioner.  His  head  was  fixed  on  the 
top  of  the  Tol booth,  Avhere  tiie  head  of  Montrose  hud 
formerly  decayed.^ 

1  The  authors  from  whom  I  have  tsiken  the  history  of  Argj'le's  expedi- 
tion are  Sir  Patrick  Huine,  who  was  an  eyewitness  of  what  he  related,  and 
Wodrow,  who  liad  access  to  materials  of  tiie  greatest  value,  among  which 
were  the  Earl's  own  papers.  AVherever  there  is  a  question  of  veracity  be- 
tween Arjryle  and  Hume,  I  have  no  doubt  that  Argyle's  narrative  ought 
to  be  followed. 

See  also  lUiniet,  i.  G-'U.  and  the  life  of  Bresson,  published  by  Dr.  Mac 
(;rie.  The  account  of  the  Scotch  rebellion  in  the  Life  of  .Tames  the  Second, 
is  a  ridiculous  romance,  not  written  by  the  King  himself,  nor  derived  from 
liis  papers,  but  composed  by  a  .Jacobite  who  did  not  even  take  the  troublfl 
to  look  at  the  map  of  the  seat  of  war. 

vol..  II.  11 


160  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

Tlie  head  of  the  brave  and  sincere,  tliough  not 
Execution  blamcless  Rumbold,  was  already  on  the  West 
of  Rumbold.  p^^.j.  ^,f  Edinburgh.  Surrounded  by  factious 
and  cowardly  associates,  he  had,  through  the  whole  cam- 
paign, behaved  himself  like  a  soldier  trained  in  the 
school  of  the  great  Protector,  had  in  council  strenu- 
ously supported  the  autliority  of  Argyle,  and  had  in 
the  field  been  distinguished  by  tranquil  intrepidity. 
After  the  dispersion  of  the  army  he  was  set  upon  by  a 
party  of  militia.  He  defended  himself  desperately,  and 
would  have  cut  his  way  through  them,  had  they  not 
hamstringed  his  horse.  He  was  brought  to  Edinburgh 
mortally  wounded.  The  wish  of  the  government  was 
that  he  should  be  executed  in  England.  But  he  was 
so  near  death  that,  if  he  was  not  hanged  in  Scotland, 
he  could  not  be  hanged  at  all  ;  and  the  pleasure  of 
hanging  him  was  one  which  the  conquerors  could  not 
bear  to  forego.  It  was  indeed  not  to  be  expected  that 
they  would  show  much  lenity  to  one  who  was  regarded 
as  the  chief  of  the  Rye  House  plot,  and  who  was  the 
owner  of  the  building  from  Avhich  that  plot  took  its 
name :  but  the  insolence  with  which  they  treated  the 
dying  man  seems  to  our  more  humane  age  almost  in- 
credible. One  of  the  Scotch  Privy  Councillors  told 
him  that  he  was  a  confounded  villain.  "  I  am  at  peace 
with  God,"  answered  Rumbold,  calmly ;  "  how  then 
can  I  be  confounded  ?  " 

He  was  hastily  tried,  convicted,  and  sentenced  to  be 
hanged  and  quartered  within  a  few  hours,  near  the 
City  Cross  in  the  High  Street.  Though  unable  to 
stand  without  the  support  of  two  men,  he  maintained 
his  fortitude  to  the  last,  and  under  the  gibbet  raised  his 
feeble  voice  against  Popery  and  tyranny  with  such  ve- 
hemence tliat  the  officers  ordered  the  drums  to  strike 


I 


1«86.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  161 

up,  lest  the  people  should  hear  him.  He  was  a  friend, 
he  said,  to  limited  monarchy.  But  he  never  would 
believe  that  Providence  had  sent  a  few  men  into  the 
world  ready  booted  and  spurred  to  ride,  and  millions 
ready  saddled  and  bridled  to  be  ridden.  "  I  desire," 
he  cried,  "  to  bless  and  magnify  God's  holy  name  for 
this,  that  I  stand  here,  not  for  any  wrong  that  I  have 
done,  but  for  adhering  to  his  cause  in  an  evil  day.  If 
every  hair  of  my  head  were  a  man,  in  this  quarrel  I 
would  venture  them  all." 

Both  at  his  trial  and  at  his  execution  he  spoke  of 
assassination  with  the  abhorrence  Avhich  became  a  <rood 
Christian  and  a  brave  soldier.  He  had  never,  he  pro- 
tested, on  the  faith  of  a  dyino;  man,  harboured  the 
thought  of  committing  such  villany.  But  he  frankly 
owned  that,  in  conversation  with  his  fellow  conspira- 
tors, he  had  mentioned  his  own  house  as  a  place  where 
Charles  and  James  mio;ht  with  advantao;e  be  attacked, 
and  that  much  had  been  said  on  the  subject,  though 
nothing  had  been  determined.  It  may  at  first  sight 
seem  that  this  acknowledgment  is  inconsistent  with  his 
declaration  that  he  had  always  regarded  assassination 
with  horror.  But  the  truth  appears  to  be  that  he  was 
imposed  upon  by  a  distinction  which  deluded  many  of 
his  contemporaries.  Nothing  would  have  induced  him 
to  piit  poison  into  the  food  of  the  two  princes,  or  to 
poniard  them  in  their  sleep.  But  to  make  an  unex- 
pected onset  on  the  troop  of  Life  Guards  which  sur- 
rounded the  royal  coach,  to  exchange  sword  cuts  and 
pistol  shots,  and  to  take  the  cliance  of  slaying  or  of 
being  slain,  was,  in  his  view,  a  lawful  military  opera- 
tion. Ambuscades  and  surprises  were  among  the  or- 
dinary incidents  of  war.  Every  old  soldier,  Cavalier 
or  Roundhead,  had  been  engaged  hi  sucli  entei-prises. 


162  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

If  in  the  skirmish  the  King  should  fall,  he  would  fall 
by  fair  iigliting  and  not  by  murder.  Precisely  the 
same  reasoning  was  employed,  after  the  Revolution, 
by  James  himself  and  by  some  of  his  most  devoted 
followers,  to  justify  a  wicked  attempt  on  the  life  of 
William  the  Third.  A  band  of  Jacobites  was  commis- 
sioned to  attack  the  Prince  of  Orange  in  his  winter 
quarters.  The  meaning  latent  under  this  specious 
phrase  was  that  the  Prince's  throat  was  to  be  cut  as  he 
went  in  his  coach  from  Richmond  to  Kensington.  It 
may  seem  strange  that  such  fallacies,  tire  dregs  of  the 
Jesuitical  casuistiy,  should  have  had  power  to  seduce 
men  of  heroic  spirit,  both  Whigs  and  Tories,  into  a 
crime  on  which  divine  and  human  laws  have  justly  set 
a  peculiar  note  of  infamy.  But  no  sophism  is  too  gross 
to  delude  minds  distempered  by  party  spirit.^ 

Argyle,  who  survived  Rumbold  a  few  hours,  left  a 
dying  testimony  to  the  virtues  of  the  gallant  English- 
man. "  Poor  Rumbold  was  a  great  support  to  me,  and 
a  brave  man,  and  died  Christianly."  ^ 

Ayloffe  showed  as  much  contempt  of  death  as  either 
Death  of  Argyle  or  Rumbold :  but  his  end  did  not, 
Ayio£fe.         ]jj,q   theirs,  edify  pious  minds.     Though  po- 

1  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  10.;  Western  Martyrology;  Burnet,  i.  633.;  Fox's 
History  Appendix  iv.  I  can  find  no  way,  except  that  indicated  in  the 
text,  of  reconciling  Rumbold's  denial  that  he  had  ever  admitted  into  his 
mind  the  thought  of  assassination  with  his  confession  that  he  had  himself 
mentioned  liis  own  house  as  a  convenient  place  for  an  attack  on  the  royal 
brothers.  The  distinction  which  I  suppose  him  to  have  taken  was  taken 
by  another  Rye  House  conspirator,  who  was,  like  him,  an  old  soldier  of  the 
Commonwealth,  CaptaJn  Walcot.  On  Walcot's  trial.  West,  the  witness 
for  the  crown,  said,  "  Captain,  you  did  agree  to  be  one  of  those  that  were 
to  fight  the  Guards."  "  What,  then,  was  the  reason,"  asked  Chief  Justice 
Pemberton,  "  that  he  would  not  kill  the  King?"  "He  said,"  answered 
West,  "  that  it  was  a  base  thing  to  kill  a  naked  man,  and  he  would  not 
do  it." 

a  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  9. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  163 

litical  sympathy  liad  drawn  him  towards  the  Puritans, 
he  had  no  rehgious  sympathy  with  them,  and  was  in- 
deed regarded  by  them  as  little  better  than  an  atheist. 
He  belonged  to  that  section  of  the  Whigs  which  souglit 
for  models  rather  among  the  patriots  of  Greece  and 
Rome  than  among  the  prophets  and  judges  of  Israel. 
lie  was  taken  prisoner,  and  carried  to  Glasgow.  There 
he  attempted  to  destroy  himself  with  a  small  penknife : 
but,  though  he  gave  himself  several  wounds,  none  of 
them  proved  mortal,  and  he  had  strength  enough  left 
to  bear  a  journey  to  London.  He  was  brought  befoi'e 
the  Privy  Council,  and  interrogated  by  the  King,  but 
had  too  much  elevation  of  mind  to  save  himself  by 
informing  against  others.  A  story  was  current  among 
the  Whigs  that  the  King  said,  "  You  had  better  be 
fi'ank  with  me,  Mr.  Aylotfe.  You  know  that  it  is  in 
my  power  to  pardon  you."  Then,  it  was  rumoured, 
the  captive  broke  his  sullen  silence,  and  answered, 
*'  It  may  be  in  your  power ;  but  it  is  not  in  your 
nature."  He  was  executed  under  his  old  outlawry 
before  the  gate  of  the  Temple,  and  died  with  stoical 
composure.^ 

In  the  meantime  the  vengeance  of  the  conquerors 
was  mercilessly  wreaked  on  the  people  of  Deyastation 
Argj'leshire.  Many  of  the  Campbells  were  shire. 
hanged  by  Athol  without  a  trial  ;  and  he  was  with  dif- 
ficulty restrained  by  the  Privy  Council  from  taking 
more  lives.  The  country  to  the  extent  of  thirty  mik's 
round  Inverary  was  wasted.  Houses  were  burned,  tlie 
stones  of  mills  were  broken  to  pieces,  fruit  trees  were 
cut  down,  and  the  very  roots  seared  with  fire.  The 
nets  and  fishing  boats,  the  sole  means  by  which  many 

1  Wade'.s  Narnitivc,  Ilarl.  MS.  6845.;  Burnet,  i.  634.;  Van  CitterVs  De* 
•patch  of    '"J    "  1685. ;  Luttrcll's  Diary  of  the  same  date. 


llU  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

iiiliabitaiits  of  the  coast  subsisted,  were  des'royed. 
More  than  three  hundred  rebels  and  malecontents  were 
transported  to  the  colonies.  Many  of  them  were  also 
sentenced  to  mutilation.  On  a  single  day  the  hangman 
of  Edinburgh  cut  olF  the  ears  of  thirty-five  prisoners. 
Several  women  were  sent  across  the  Atlantic  after  being 
first  branded  in  the  cheek  with  a  hot  iron.  It  was 
even  in  contemplation  to  obtain  an  act  of  Parliament 
proscribing  the  name  of  Campbell,  as  the  name  of  Mac 
Gregor  had  been  proscribed  eighty  years  before.^ 

Argyle's  expedition  appears  to  haA^e  produced  little 
sensation  in  the  south  of  the  island.  The  tidincrs  of 
his  landing  reached  London  just  before  the  English 
Parliament  met.  The  King  mentioned  the  news  from 
the  throne;  and  the  Houses  assured  him  that  they 
would  stand  by  him  against  every  enemy.  Nothing 
more  was  required  of  them.  Over  Scotland  they  had 
no  authority ;  and  a  war  of  which  the  theatre  was  so 
distant,  and  of  which  the  event  might,  almost  from  the 
first,  be  easily  foreseen,  excited  only  a  languid  interest 
in  London. 

But,  a  week  before  the  final  dispersion  of  Argyle's 
Ineffectual  ^^^'^^V'  England  was  agitated  by  the  news  that 
pr^vent^ '"  ^  ^^^orc  formidable  invader  had  landed  on  her 
frZ"i^vh)g  ^"^'^^  shores.  It  had  been  agreed  among  the 
Houand.  refugccs  that  Monmouth  should  sail  from 
Holland  six  days  after  the  departure  of  the  Scots.  He 
had  deferred  his  expedition  a  short  time,  probably  in 
the  hope  that  most  of  the  troops  in  the  south  of  the 
island  would  be  moved  to  the  north  as  soon  as  war 
broke  out  in  the  Highlands,  and  that  he  should  find  no 

^  Wodrow,  III.  ix.  4.  and  III.  ix.  10.  Wodrow  gives  from  the  Acts  of 
Council  the  names  of  all  the  prisoners  who  were  transported,  mutilated,  ol 
Oraudrd. 


1886.]  JAMES   THE  SECOND.  165 

force  ready  to  oppose  him.  When  at  length  he  was 
desirous  to  proceed,  the  wind  had  become  adverse  and 
violent. 

While  his  small  fleet  lay  tossing  in  the  Texel,  a  con- 
test was  going  on  among  the  Dutch  authorities.  The 
States  General  and  the  Prince  of  Orange  were  on  one 
side,  the  Town  Council  and  Admiralty  of  Amsterdam 
on  the  other. 

Skelton  had  delivered  to  the  States  General  a  list  of 
the  refugees  whose  residence  in  the  United  Provinces 
caused  uneasiness  to  his  master.  The  States  General, 
anxious  to  grant  every  reasonable  request  which  James 
could  make,  sent  copies  of  the  list  to  the  provincial 
autliorities.  The  provincial  authorities  sent  copies  to 
the  municipal  authorities.  The  magistrates  of  all  the 
towns  were  directed  to  take  such  measures  as  mio-lit 
prevent  the  proscribed  Whigs  from  molesting  the  Eng- 
lish government.  In  general  those  directions  were 
obeyed.  At  Rotterdam  in  particular,  where  the  influ- 
ence of  William  was  all  powerful,  sucli  activity  was 
shown  as  called  forth  warm  acknowledo;ments  from 
James.  But  Amsterdam  was  the  chief  seat  of  the  emi- 
grants ;  and  the  governing  body  of  Amsterdam  would 
see  nothing,  hear  nothino;,  know  of  nothino-.  The  Hiirh 
Bailifl"  of  the  city,  who  was  himself  in  daily  communi- 
cation with  Ferguson,  reported  to  the  Hague  that  he 
did  not  know  where  to  find  a  single  one  of  the  refu- 
gees ;  and  with  this  excuse  the  federal  government 
was  forced  to  be  content.  The  truth  was  that  the  Eno-- 
lish  exiles  were  as  well  known  at  Amsterdam  and  as 
much  stared  at  in  the  streets  as  if  they  had  been 
Chinese. 1 

1  Sbelton's  letter  is  dated  the  ^\h  of  May,  1G86.     It  will  be  found,  to- 
gether with  a  letter  of  tlie  Schout  or  High  Bailiff"  of  Amsterdam,  in  a  little 


166  HISTORY  OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

A  few  days  later,  Skelton  received  orders  from  his 
court  to  request  that,  in  consequence  of  the  dangers 
which  threatened  his  master's  throne,  the  three  Scotch 
regiments  in  the  service  of  the  United  Provinces  might 
be  sent  to  Great  Britain  without  delay.  He  applied 
to  the  Prince  of  Orange  ;  and  the  prince  undertook 
to  manage  the  matter,  but  predicted  that  Amsterdam 
would  raise  some  difficulty.  The  prediction  proved 
correct.  The  deputies  of  Amsterdam  refused  to  con- 
sent, and  succeeded  in  causing  some  delay.  But  the 
question  was  not  one  of  those  on  which,  by  the  consti- 
tution of  the  republic,  a  single  city  could  prevent  the 
wish  of  the  majority  from  being  carried  into  effect. 
The  influence  of  William  prevailed ;  and  the  troops 
were  embarked  with  great  expedition.^ 

Skelton  was  at  the  same  time  exerting  himself,  not 
indeed  very  judiciously  or  temperately,  to  stop  the 
ships  which  the  English  refugees  had  fitted  out.  He 
expostulated  in  warm  terms  with  the  Admiralty  of 
Amsterdam.     The   negligence  of  that  board,  he  said) 

volume  published  a  few  months  later,  and  entitled,  "  Histoire  des  Ev6ne- 
mens  Tragiques  d'Angleterre."  The  documents  inserted  in  that  work  are, 
as  far  as  1  have  examined  tlieni,  given  exactly  from  the  Dutch  archives, 
except  that  Skelton's  French,  whicii  was  not  the  purest,  is  slightly  cor- 
rected.    See  also  Grey's  Narrative. 

Goodenough,  on  his  examination  after  the  battle  of  Sedgemoor,  said. 
"  The  Schciut  of  Amsterdam  was  a  particular  friend,  to  this  last  design." 
Lansdowne  MS.  1152. 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  refute  those  writers  who  represent  the  Prince  of 
Orange  as  an  accomplice  in  Monmouth's  enterprise.  The  circumstance  oe 
■which  they  chiefly  rely  is  that  the  authorities  of  Amsterdam  took  no  effect- 
ual steps  for  preventing  the  expedition  from  sailing.  This  circumstance  if 
in  truth  the  strongest  proof  that  the  expedition  was  not  favoured  by  Wil- 
liam. No  person,  not  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  institutions  and  politics 
of  Holland,  would  hold  thf  Stadtholder  answerable  for  the  proceedings  of 
the  heads  of  the  Loevestcin  part}'. 

1  Avaux,  Neg.  June  J^.  JL.  j^.  1685;  Letter  of  the  Prince  of  Orange 
to  Lord  Rochester,  June  9.  1685. 


} 


1M5.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  167 

had  already  enabled  one  band  of  rebels  to  invade  Brit- 
ain. For  a  second  error  of  the  same  kind  there  could 
be  no  excuse.  He  peremptorily  demanded  that  a  large 
vessel,  named  the  Helderenbei'gh,  might  be  detained. 
It  was  pretended  that  this  vessel  was  bound  for  the 
Canaries.  But,  in  truth,  she  had  been  freighted  by 
Monmouth,  carried  twenty-six  guns,  and  was  loaded 
with  arms  and  ammunition.  The  Admiralty  of  Am- 
sterdam replied  that  the  liberty  of  trade  and  navigation 
was  not  to  be  restrained  for  light  reasons,  and  that  the 
Helderenbergh  could  not  be  stopped  without  an  order 
from  the  States  General.  Skelton,  whose  uniform 
practice  seems  to  have  been  to  begin  at  the  w^-ong  end, 
now  had  recourse  to  the  States  General.  The  States 
General  gave  the  necessary  orders.  Then  the  Admi- 
ralty of  Amsterdam  pretended  that  there  was  not  a 
sufficient  naval  force  in  the  Texel  to  seize  so  large  a 
ship  as  the  Helderenbergh,  and  suffered  Monmouth  to 
sail  unmolested.^ 

The  weather  was  bad :  the  vo3'age  was  long  ;  and 
several  English  men  of  war  were  cruising  in  the  Chan- 
nel. But  Monmouth  escaped  both  the  sea  and  the 
enemy.  As  he  passed  by  the  clilfs  of  Dorsetshire,  it 
was  thought  desirable  to  send  a  boat  to  the  beach  with 
one  of  the  refugees  named  Thomas  Dare.  This  man, 
though  of  low  mind  and  manners,  had  great  influence 
at  Taunton.  He  was  directed  to  hasten  thither  across 
the  country,  and  to  ay)prise  his  friends  that  Monmouth 
would  soon  be  on   English  ground.^ 

On  the  mornino;  of  the  eleventh  of  June   the   Hel- 

1  Van  Citters,  June  9  .,  June  Xi.  1685.  Tift  correspondence  of  Skelton 
w  th  the  States  General  and  witli  the  Admiralty  of  Amsterdam  is  in  the 
anhives  ut  tlie  Hague.  Some  pieces  will  be  found  in  the  Ev6nemcns  Tra- 
giques  d'Angleterre.     See  also  IJuruet,  i.  040. 

-  Wade's  confession  in  the  Ilardwicke  Papers;  Harl.  MS.  6845. 


168  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

derenbergh,  accompanied  by  two  smaller  vessels,  ap- 
HisarriTai  pearcd  off  the  port  of  Lyme.  That  town  is  a 
at  Lyme.  small  knot  of  steep  and  narrow  alleys,  lying 
on  a  coast  wild,  rocky,  and  beaten  by  a  stormy  sea. 
The  place  was  then  chiefly  remarkable  for  a  pier  which, 
in  the  days  of  the  Plantagenets,  had  been  constructed 
of  stones,  miliewn  and  uncemented.  This  ancient 
work,  known  by  the  name  of  the  Cob,  inclosed  the 
only  haven  w^here,  in  a  space  of  many  miles,  the  fisher- 
men could  take  refuge  from  the  tempests  of  the  Chan- 
nel. 

The  appearance  of  the  three  ships,  foreign  built  and 
without  colours,  perplexed  the  inhabitants  of  Lyme  ; 
and  the  uneasiness  increased  when  it  was  found  that 
the  Customhouse  officers,  who  had  gone  on  board  ac- 
cording to  usage,  did  not  return.  The  town's  people 
repaired  to  the  cliffs,  and  gazed  long  and  anxiously, 
but  could  find  no  solution  of  the  mystery.  At  length 
seven  boats  put  off  from  the  largest  of  the  strange 
vessels,  and  rowed  to  the  shore.  From  these  boats 
landed  about  eighty  men,  well  armed  and  appointed. 
Among  them  were  Monmouth,  Grey,  Fletcher,  Fergu- 
son, Wade,  and  Anthony  Buyse,  an  officer  who  had 
been  in  the  service  of  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg;.^ 

Monmouth  commanded  silence,  kneeled  down  on  the 
shore,  thanked  God  for  having  preserved  the  friends  of 
liberty  and  pure  religion  from  the  perils  of  the  sea,  and 
implored  the  divine  blessing  on  what  was  yet  to  be 
done  by  land.  He  then  drew  his  sword  and  led  his 
men  over  the  cliffs  into  the  town. 

As  soon  as  it  wa^  known  under  what  leader  and  for 
what  purpose  the  expedition  came,  the  enthusiasm  of 

1  See  Buyse's  evidence  against  Jlonmouth  and  Fletcher  in  the  Collection 
of  State  Trials. 


1685.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  169 

the  populace  burst  through  all  restraints.  The  little 
town  was  m  an  uproar  with  men  running  to  and  fro, 
and  shouting  "  A  Monmouth !  a  Monmouth  !  the  Prot- 
estant religion  !  "  Meanwliile  the  ensign  of  the  adven- 
turers,  a  blue  flag,  was  set  up  in  the  market  place. 
The  military  stores  were  deposited  in  the  town  hall ; 
and  a  Declaration  setting  forth  the  objects  of  the  expe- 
dition was  read  from  the  Cross.^ 

This  Declaration,  the  masterpiece  of  Ferguson's 
genius,  was  not  a  grave  manifesto  such  as  ^^  deciara- 
ought  to  be  put  forth  by  a  leader  drawing  the  ^^' 
sword  for  a  great  public  cause,  but  a  libel  of  the  lowest 
class,  both  in  sentiment  and  lano:uao:e.^  It  contained 
undoubtedly  many  just  charges  against  the  government. 
But  these  charges  were  set  forth  in  the  prolix  and 
inflated  style  of  a  bad  pamphlet ;  and  the  paper  con- 
tained other  charges  of  which  the  whole  disgrace  falls 
on  those  who  made  them.  The  Duke  of  York,  it  was 
positively  affirmed,  had  burned  down  London,  had 
strangled  Godfrey,  had  cut  the  throat  of  Essex,  and 
had  poisoned  the  late  King.  On  account  of  those  vil- 
lainous and  unnatural  crimes,  but  chiefly  of  that  exe- 
crable fact,  the  late  horrible  and  barbarous  ])arricide,  — 
such  was  the  copiousness  and  such  the  felicity  of  Fer- 
guson's diction,  —  James  was  declared  a  mortal  and 
bloody  enemy,  a  tyrant,  a  murderer,  and  an  usurper. 
No  treaty  should  be  made  with  him.  The  sword 
should  not  be  sheathed  till  he  had  been  brouo;ht  to 
condign  punisjunent  as  a  traitor.  The  government 
should  be  settled  on  principles  favourable  to  liberty. 

1  Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons,  June  13.  1685;  Harl.  MS.  6845.; 
Lansdowiie  MS.  1152. 

2  Burnet,  i.  G41.;  Goodcnoufjh's  confession  in  the  Lansdowne  MS.  1152. 
Copies  of  the  Declaration,  as  originally  printed,  are  very  rare;  but  there  is 
one  at  the  British  Museum. 


170  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

All  Protestant  sects  should  be  tolerated.  The  forfeited 
charters  should  be  restored.  Parliaments  should  be 
held  annually,  and  should  no  longer  be  prorogued  or 
dissolved  by  royal  caprice.  The  only  standing  force 
should  be  the  militia.  The  militia  should  be  commanded 
by  the  Sheriffs  ;  and  the  Sheriffs  should  be  chosen  by 
the  freeholders.  Finally  Monmouth  declared  that  he 
could  prove  himself  to  have  been  born  in  lawful  wed- 
lock, and  to  be,  by  right  of  blood.  King  of  England,  but 
that,  for  the  present,  he  waived  his  claims,  that  he 
would  leave  them  to  the  judgment  of  a  free  Parliament, 
and  that,  in  the  meantime,  he  desired  to  be  considered 
only  as  the  Captain  General  of  the  English  Protestants 
who  were  in  arms  against  tyranny  and  Popery. 

Disgraceful  as  this  manifesto  was  to  those  who  put  it 
His  popu-  forth,  it  was  not  unskilfully  framed  for  the 
theWe°of  purposc  of  Stimulating  the  passions  of  the 
England.  yulgar.  In  the  West  the  effect  was  great. 
The  gentry  and  clergy  of  that  part  of  England  were 
indeed,  with  few  exceptions,  Tories.  But  the  yeomen, 
the  traders  of  the  towns,  the  peasants,  and  the  artisans 
were  generally  animated  by  the  old  Roundhead  spirit. 
Many  of  them  were  Dissenters,  and  had  been  goaded 
by  petty  persecution  into  a  temper  fit  for  desperate 
enterprise.  The  great  mass  of  the  population  abhorred 
Popery  and  adored  Monmouth.  He  was  no  stranger  to 
tiiem.  His  progress  through  Somersetshire  and  Dev- 
onshire in  the  summer  of  1680  was  still  fresh  in  the 
memory  of  all  men.  He  was  on  that  occasion  sumpt- 
uously entertained  by  Thomas  Thynne  at  Longleat 
Hall,  then,  and  perhaps  still,  the  most  magnificent 
country  house  in  England.  From  Longleat  to  Exeter 
the  hedges  were  lined  with  shouting  spectators.  The 
roads  were  strewn  with  boughs  and  flowers.     The  mul- 


l««6.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  171 

titude,  in  their  eagerness  to  see  and  touch  their  favour- 
ite, broke  down  the  pahngs  of  parks,  and  besieged  the 
mansions  where  he  was  feasted.  When  he  reached 
Chard  his  escort  consisted  of  five  thousand  horsemen. 
At  Exeter  all  Devonshire  had  been  gathered  together 
to  welcome  him.  One  striking  part  of  the  show  was  a 
company  of  nine  hundred  young  men  who,  clad  in  a 
white  uniform,  marched  before  him  into  the  city.^  The 
tuni  of  fortune  which  had  alienated  the  gentry  from 
his  cause  had  produced  no  eifect  on  the  common  people. 
To  them  he  was  still  the  good  Duke,  the  Protestant 
Duke,  the  rightful  heir  whom  a  vile  conspiracy  kept 
out  of  his  own.  They  came  to  his  standard  in  crowds. 
All  the  clerks  whom  he  could  employ  were  too  few  to 
take  down  the  names  of  the  recruits.  Before  he  had 
been  twenty-four  hours  on  English  ground  he  was  at 
the  head  of  fifteen  hundred  men.  Dare  arrived  from 
Taunton  with  forty  horsemen  of  no  very  martial  ap- 
pearance, and  brought  encouraging  intelligence  as  to 
the  state  of  public  feeling  m  Somersetshire.  As  yet 
all  seemed  to  promise  well.^ 

But  a  force  was  collecting  at  Bridport  to  oppose  the 
insurgents.  On  the  thirteenth  of  June  the  red  regi- 
ment of  Dorsetshire  militia  came  pouring  into  that  town. 
The  Somersetshire,  or  yellow  regiment,  of  which  Sir 
Williani  Portman,  a  Tory  gentleman  of  great  note,  was 
CJoloiR'l,  was  exi)ected  to  arrive  on  the  following  day.^ 
The  Duke  determined  to  strike  an  immediate  blow. 
A  detachment  of  his  troops  was  preparing  to  march  to 
P>ridport  when  a  disastrous  event  threw  the  whole  camp 
into  confusion. 

1  Historical  Accnimt  of  tti,"  JAf,.  ami   m.itrn.inimous  Actions  of  the  most 
ilhistrious  I'n.ttsfaiit  I'linic  .lanics,  Duke  of  Monmouth,  1G83. 
-  Wiule's  confession,  Ilardwicke  I'ajiers;  Axe  Papers;  Harl.  MS.  684t 
»  Harl.  MS.  G845 


172  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

Fletcher  of  Saltoun  had  been  appointed  to  command 
the  cavahy  under  Grey.  Fletcher  was  ill  mounted  ; 
and  indeed  there  were  few  chargers  in  the  camp  which 
had  not  been  taken  from  the  plough.  When  lie  was 
ordered  to  Bridport,  he  thought  that  the  exigency  of  the 
case  warranted  him  in  borrowing,  without  asking  per- 
mission, a  fine  horse  belonmna;  to  Dare.  Dare  resented 
this  liberty,  and  assailed  Fletcher  with  gross  abuse. 
Fletcher  kept  his  temper  better  than  any  who  knew 
him  expected.  At  last  Dare,  presuming  on  the  pa- 
tience with  which  his  insolence  was  endured,  ventured 
to  shake  a  switch  at  the  high  born  and  high  spirited  Scot. 
Fletcher's  blood  boiled.  He  drew  a  pistol  and  shot 
Dare  dead.  Such  sudden  and  violent  revenge  would 
not  have  been  thought  strange  in  Scotland,  where  the 
law  had  always  been  weak,  where  he  who  did  not  right 
himself  by  the  strong  hand  was  not  likely  to  be  righted 
at  all,  and  where,  consequently,  human  life  was  held 
almost  as  cheap  as  in  the  worst  governed  provinces  of 
Italy.  But  the  people  of  the  southern  part  of  the  isl- 
and were  not  accustomed  to  see  deadly  weapons  used 
and  blood  spilled  on  account  of  a  rude  word  or  gesture, 
except  in  duel  between  gentlemen  with  equal  arms. 
There  was  a  general  cry  for  vengeance  on  the  foreigner 
who  had  murdered  an  Englishman.  Monmouth  could 
not  resist  the  clamour.  Fletcher,  who,  when  his  first 
burst  of  rage  had  spent  itself,  was  overwhelmed  with 
remorse  and  sorrow,  took  refuge  on  board  of  the  Hel- 
derenbergh,  escaped  to  the  Continent,  and  repaired  to 
Hungary,  where  he  fought  bravely  against  the  com- 
mon enemy  of  Christendom.^ 

Situated  as  the  insurgents  were,  the  loss  of  a  man 

1  Buyse's  evidence  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Burnet,  i.  942.; 
Ferguson's  MS.  quoted  b}'  Eachard. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  173 

of  parts  and   energy   was  not  easily  to  be  repaired. 
Early  on  the  mornino;  of  the  following;  day,   Encounter 
the   fourteenth  of  June,  Grey,  accompanied  with  the 
1)V    Wade,    marched    with   about   five    hun-  Bndport. 
(Ired  men  to  attack  Bndport.     A  confused  and  inde- 
cisive action  took  place,  such  as  was  to  be  expected 
when  two  bands  of  ploughmen,  officered  by   country 
gentlemen  and  barristers,  were  opposed  to  each  other. 
For  a  time  Monmouth's  men  drove  the  militia  before 
them.     Then  the  militia  made  a  stand,  and  Monmouth's 
men  retreated  in  some  confusion.     Grey  and  his  cavalry 
never  stopped  till  they  were  safe  at  Lyme  again :  but 
Wade   rallied  the  infantry,  and  brought  them  off  in 
o;ood  order.^ 

There  was  a  violent  outcry  against  Grey ;  and  some 
of  the  adventurers  pressed  Monmouth  to  take  a  severe 
course.  Monmouth,  however,  would  not  listen  to  this 
advice.  His  lenity  has  been  attributed  by  some  writers 
to  his  good  nature,  which  undoubtedly  often  amounted 
to  weakness.  Others  have  supposed  that  he  was  un- 
willing to  deal  harshly  with  the  only  peer  who  served  in 
his  army.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  the  Duke,  who, 
though  not  a  general  of  the  highest  order,  understood 
war  very  much  better  than  the  preachers  and  lawyers 
who  were  always  obtruding  their  advice  on  him,  made 
allowances  which  people  altogether  inexpert  in  military 
attiiirs  never  thought  of  making.  In  justice  to  a  man 
who  has  had  few  defenders,  it  must  be  observed  that 
the  task,  which,  throughout  this  campaign,  was  assigned 
to  Grey  was  one  which,  if  he  had  been  the  boldest  and 
nu'st  skilful  of  soldiers,  he  could  scarcely  have  performed 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  gain  credit.  He  was  at  the  head 
of  the  cavalry.  It  is  notorious  that  a  horse  soldier 
1  Loudon  Gazette,  June  18. 1685;  Wade's  Confession,  Hardwicke  Papers. 


174  HISTORY  OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

requires  a  longer  training  than  a  foot  soldier,  and  that 
the  war  horse  requires  a  longer  training  than  his  rider. 
Something  may  be  done  with  a  raw  infantry  which  has 
enthusiasm  and  animal  courage  :  but  nothino;  can  be 
more  helpless  than  a  raw  cavalry,  consisting  of  yeomen 
and  tradesmen  mounted  on  cart  horses  and  post  horses ; 
and  such  was  the  cavalry  which  Grey  commanded.  Tlie 
wonder  is,  not  that  his  men  did  not  stand  fire  with  reso- 
lution, not  that  they  did  not  use  their  weapons  with 
vigour,  but  that  they  were  able  to  keep  their  seats. 

Still  recruits  came  in  by  hundreds.  Arming  and 
drilling  went  on  all  day.  Meantime  the  news  of  the  in- 
surrection had  spread  fast  and  wide.  On  the  evening 
on  which  the  Duke  landed,  Gregory  Alford,  Mayor  of 
Lyme,  a  zealous  Tory,  and  a  most  bitter  persecutor  of 
Nonconformists,  sent  off'  his  servants  to  give  the  alarm 
to  the  gentry  of  Somersetshire  and  Dorsetshire,  and 
hi:nself  took  horse  for  the  West.  Late  at  night  he 
stopped  at  Honiton,  and  thence  despatched  a  few  hur- 
ried lines  to  London  with  the  ill  tidings.^  He  then 
pushed  on  to  Exeter,  where  he  found  Christopher  Monk, 
Duke  of  Albemarle.  This,  nobleman,  the  son  and  heir 
of  George  Monk,  the  restorer  of  the  Stuarts,  was  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Devonshire,  and  was  then  holding  a  mus- 
ter of  mihtia.  Four  thousand  men  of  the  trainbands 
were  actually  assembled  under  his  command.  He  seems 
to  have  thought  that,  with  this  force,  he  should  be  able 
at  once  to  crash  the  rebellion.  He  therefore  marched 
towards  Lyme. 

But  when,  on  the  afternoon  of  Monday  the  fifteenth 
Encounter      of  JuHC,  he  readied  Axminster,  he  found  the 

of  the  rebels      .  .  ,  ,  , 

witii  the  msurgents  di'awn  up  there  to  encounter  hnu. 
Axminster.     They  presented  a  resolute  front.     Four  field 

i  Lords'  Journals,  June  13.  1685. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  175 

pieces  were  pointed  against  tlie  royal  troops.  The 
tliick  hedges,  which  on  each  side  overhung  the  narrow 
lanes,  were  lined  with  musketeers.  Albemarle,  how- 
ever, was  less  alarmed  by  the  preparations  of  the  enemy 
than  by  the  spirit  which  appeared  in  his  own  ranks. 
Such  was  Monmouth's  popularity  among  the  common 
people  of  Devonshire  that,  if  once  the  trainbands  had 
caught  sight  of  his  well  known  face  and  figure,  they 
would  probably  have  gone  over  to  him  in  a  body. 

Albemarle,  therefore,  though  he  had  a  great  supe- 
riority of  force,  thought  it  advisable  to  retreat.  The 
retreat  soon  became  a  rout.  The  whole  countiy  was 
strewn  with  the  arms  and  unifoi'ms  which  the  fugitives 
had  throwm  away  ;  and,  had  Monmouth  urged  the  pur- 
suit with  vigour,  he  would  probably  have  taken  Exeter 
without  a  blow.  But  he  Avas  satisfied  with  the  advan- 
tage which  he  had  gained,  and  thought  it  desirable  that 
his  reciniits  should  be  better  trained  before  they  were 
employed  in  any  hazardous  service.  He  therefore 
marched  towards  Taunton,  where  he  arrived  on  the 
eighteenth  of  June,  exactly  a  week  after  his  land- 
ing. ^ 

The   Court  and   the  Parliament  had   been  greatly 
moved  by  the  news  from  the  West.     At  five  Newaoftho 
in  the  morning  of  Saturday  the  thirteenth  of    e-S"o 
Jime,  the  King  had  received  the  letter  which  ^°"'^°"- 
the  Mayor  of  Lyme   had   despatched   from  Honiton. 
The  Privy  Council  was  instantly  called  together.     Or- 
ders were  given  that  the  strength  of  every  company  of 
infantry  and  of  every  troop  of  cavalry  should  be  in- 
creased.    Commissions  were  issued  for  the  levying  of 

1  Wade's  Confession;  Ferguson  MS.;  Axe  Papers,  TIarl.  MS.  G845. ; 
Oldinixon,  701,  702.  Oldmixon,  who  was  then  a  boy,  lived  very  near  the 
scene  of  these  events. 

VOL.  u.  12 


176  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

new  regiments.  Alford's  communication  was  laid  be- 
Loyaity  of  fore  the  Lords  ;  and  its  substance  was  commu- 
ment.  nicated  to  the  Commons  by  a  message.     The 

Commons  examined  the  couriers  who  had  arrived  from 
tlie  West,  and  instantly  ordered  a  bill  to  be  brought  in 
for  attainting  Monmouth  of  high  treason.  Addresses 
wei'e  voted  assuring  the  King  that  both  his  peers  and 
his  people  were  determined  to  stand  by  him  with  life 
and  fortune  against  all  his  enemies.  At  the  next  meet- 
ing  of  the  Houses  they  ordered  the  declaration  of  the 
rebels  to  be  burned  by  the  hangman,  and  passed  the 
bill  of  attainder  through  all  its  stages.  That  bill  re- 
ceived the  royal  assent  on  the  same  day  ;  and  a  reward 
of  five  tliousand  pounds  was  promised  for  the  apprehen- 
sion of  Monmouth. 1 

The  fact  that  Monmouth  was  in  arms  against  the 
government  was  so  notorious  that  the  bill  of  attainder 
became  a  law  with  only  a  faint  show  of  opposition  from 
one  or  two  peers,  and  has  seldom  been  severely  cen- 
sured even  bv  Whig  historians.  Yet,  Avhen  we  con- 
sider  how  important  it  is  that  legislative  and  judicial 
functions  should  be  kept  distinct,  how  important  it  is  that 
common  fame,  however  strong  and  general,  should  not 
be  received  as  a  legal  proof  of  guilt,  how  important  it  is 
to  maintain  the  rule  that  no  man  shall  be  condemned  to 
death  without  an  opportunity  of  defending  himself,  and 
how  easily  and  speedily  breaches  in  great  principles, 
when  once  made,  are  widened,  we  shall  probably  be 
disposed  to  think  that  the  course  taken  by  the  Parlia- 
ment was  open  to  some  objection.  Neither  House  had 
before  it  anything  which  even  so  corrupt  a  judge  as 
Jeffreys  could  have  directed  a  jury  to  consider  as  proof 

1  London  Gazette,  June  18.  1685;  Lords'  and  Commons'  Journals  June 
13.  and  15.;  Dutch  Despatch,  June  15. 


1M5.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  177 

of  Monmouth's  crime.  The  messengers  examined  by 
the  Commons  were  not  on  oath,  and  might  therefore 
have  related  mere  fictions  Avithout  incurring  the  ])enal- 
ties  of  perjury.  The  Lords,  who  might  have  adminis- 
tered an  oath,  appear  not  to  have  examined  any  wit- 
ness, and  to  liave  had  no  evidence  before  tliem  except 
the  letter  of  the  Mayor  of  Lyme,  which,  in  the  eye  of 
the  law,  was  no  evidence  at  all.  Extreme  danger,  it  is 
true,  justifies  extreme  remedies.  But  the  act  of  at- 
tainder was  a  remedy  which  could  not  operate  till  all 
danger  was  over,  and  which  would  become  superfluous 
at  the  very  moment  at  which  it  ceased  to  be  null. 
While  Monmouth  was  in  arms  it  was  impossible  to  exe- 
cute him.  If  he  should  be  vanquished  and  taken,  there 
would  be  no  hazard  and  no  difficulty  in  trying  him.  It 
was  afterwards  remembered  as  a  curious  circumstance 
that,  among  the  zealous  Tories  who  went  up  with  the 
bill  from  the  House  of  Commons  to  the  bar  of  the 
Lords,  was  Sir  John  Fenwick,  member  for  Northum- 
berland.^ This  gentleman,  a  few  years  later,  had  oc- 
casion to  reconsider  the  whole  subject,  and  then  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  acts  of  attainder  are  altoo-ether 
unjustifiable. 

The  Parliament  gave  other  proofs  of  loyalty  in  this 
hour  of  peril.  The  Commons  authorised  the  King  to 
raise  an  extraordinary  sum  of  four  hundred  thousand 
pounds  for  iiis  present  necessities,  and,  that  he  might 
have  no  difficulty  in  finding  the  money,  proceeded  to 
devise  new  imposts.  The  scheme  of  taxing  houses 
lately  built  in  the  capital  was  revived  and  strenuously 
supported  by  the  country  gentlemen.  It  was  resolved 
not  only  that  such  houses  should  be  taxed,  but  that  a 

1  Oliiinixon  is  wrong  in  saying  that  Feinviuk  carried  up  tlie  bill.  It  was 
»»rricd  up,  as  appears  from  tlie  Journals,  by  Lord  Aiicrain.  See  Delainere's 
Observations  on  the  Attainder  of  the  lute  Duke  of  Monmouth. 


178  mSTOTlY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Cif.  V. 

bill  should  be  broiifrht  in  prohibitino-  the  layino;  of  any 
new  foundations  within  the  bills  of  mortality.  The 
resolution,  however,  was  not  carried  into  effect.  Pow- 
erful men  who  had  land  in  the  suburbs,  and  who  hoped 
to  see  new  streets  and  squares  rise  on  their  estates, 
exerted  all  their  influence  against  the  project.  It  was 
found  that  to  adjust  the  details  would  be  a  work  of 
time  ;  and  the  King's  wants  were  so  pressing  that  he 
thought  it  necessary  to  quicken  the  movements  of  the 
House  by  a  gentle  exhortation  to  speed.  The  plan  of 
taxing  buildings  was  therefore  relinquished  ;  and  new 
duties  were  imposed  for  a  term  of  five  years  on  foreign 
silks,  linens,  and  spirits.^ 

The  Tories  of  the  Lower  House  proceeded  to  intro- 
duce what  they  called  a  bill  for  the  preservation  of  the 
King's  person  and  government.  They  proposed  that 
it  should  be  high  treason  to  say  that  Monmouth  was 
legitimate,  to  utter  any  words  tending  to  bring  the 
person  or  government  of  the  sovereign  into  hatred  or 
contempt,  or  to  make  any  motion  in  Parliament  for 
changing  the  order  of  succession.  Some  of  these  pro- 
visions excited  general  disgust  and  alarm.  The  Whigs, 
few  and  weak  as  they  Avere,  attempted  to  rally,  and 
found  themselves  reinforced  by  a  considerable  number 
of  moderate  and  sensible  Cavaliers.  Words,  it  was 
said,  may  easily  be  misunderstood  by  a  dull  man.  They 
may  easily  be  misconstrued  by  a  knave.  What  was 
spoken  metaphorically  may  be  apprehended  literally. 
What  was  spoken  ludicrously  may  be  apprehended 
seriously.  A  particle,  a  tense,  a  mood,  an  emphasis, 
may  make  the  whole  difference  between  guilt  and  in- 
nocence. The  Saviour  of  mankind  himself,  in  Avhose 
blameless  life  malice  could  find  no  act  to  impeach,  had 

Commons'  Journals  of  June  17,  18,  and  19.  1685 ;  Reresby's  Memoirs. 


M85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  179 

been  called  in  question  for  words  spoken.  False  wit- 
nesses had  suppressed  a  syllable  which  wo\ild  have 
made  it  clear  that  those  words  were  figurative,  and  had 
thus  furnished  the  Sanhedrim  with  a  pretext  under 
which  the  foulest  of  all  judicial  murders  had  been  pei'- 
petrated.  With  such  an  example  on  record,  who  could 
affirm  that,  if  mere  talk  were  made  a  substantive  trea- 
son, the  most  loyal  subject  would  be  safe  ?  These 
arguments  produced  so  great  an  effect  that  in  the  com- 
mittee amendments  were  introduced  which  greatly  mit- 
igated the  severity  of  the  bill.  But  the  clause  which 
made  it  high  treason  in  a  member  of  Parliament  to 
])ropose  the  exclusion  of  a  prince  of  the  blood  seems 
to  have  raised  no  debate,  and  was  retained.  That 
clause  was  indeed  altogether  unimportant,  except  as 
a  proof  of  the  ignorance  and  inexperience  of  the  hot- 
lieaded  Royalists  who  thronged  the  House  of  Commons. 
Had  they  learned  the  first  rudiments  of  legislation,  they 
would  have  seen  that  the  enactment  to  which  they  at- 
tached so  much  value  would  be  superfluous  while  the 
Parliament  was  disposed  to  maintain  the  order  of  suc- 
cession, and  would  be  repealed  as  soon  as  there  was  a 
Parliament  bent  on  chanping  the  order  of  succession.^ 

The  bill,  as  amended,  was  passed  and  carried  up  to 
the  Lords,  but  did  not  become  law.  The  King  had 
obtained  from  the  Parliament  all  the  pecuniary  assist- 
ance that  he  could  exj)ect ;  and  he  conceived  that, 
while  rebellion  was  actually  raging,  the  loyal  nobility 
and  sentry  would  be  of  more  use  in  their  counties  than 
at  Westminster.     He  therefore  hurried  their  delibera- 

1  Commons'  Journals,  June  10.  29.  1G85;  Lord  Lon.sdale's  IMemoirs,  8,  9.', 
Burnet,  i.  639.  'I'lie  bill,  ;\s  amniuiod  b}'  tlio  coniinittee,  will  be  found  in 
Mr.  Fox's  historical  work,  Ap|>i'n(ii.\,  iii.  If  IJurnet's  account  be  correct, 
the  odVnce.s  which,  by  the  amended  bill,  were  made  punishable  only  with 
civil  incapacities  were,  by  the  original  bill,  made  capita! 


180  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  t<^H.  V. 

tions  to  a  close,  and,  on  the  second  of  July,  dismissed 
them.  On  the  same  day  the  royal  assent  was  given  to 
a  law  reviving  that  censorship  of  the  press  which  had 
terminated  in  1679.  This  object  was  effected  by  a 
few  words  at  the  end  of  a  miscellaneous  statute  which 
continued  several  expiring  acts.  The  courtiers  did  not 
think  that  they  had  gained  a  triumph.  The  Whigs  did 
not  utter  a  murmur.  Neither  in  the  Lords  nor  in  the 
Commons  was  there  any  division,  or  even,  as  far  as  can 
now  be  learned,  any  debate  on  a  question  which  would,  in 
our  age,  convulse  the  whole  frame  of  society.  In  truth, 
the  change  was  slight  and  almost  imperceptible  ;  for, 
since  the  detection  of  the  Rye  House  Plot,  the  liberty 
of  unlicensed  printing  had  existed  only  in  name.  Dur- 
ing many  months  scarcely  one  Whig  pamphlet  had 
been  published  except  by  stealth ;  and  by  stealth  such 
pamphlets  might  be  published  still.* 

The  Houses  then  rose.  They  were  not  prorogued, 
but  only  adjourned,  in  order  that,  when  they  should 
reassemble,  they  might  take  up  their  business  in  the 
exact  state  in  which  they  had  left  it.^ 

While  the  Parliament  was  devising  sharp  laws  against 
Eeception  of  Moumouth   and    his    partisans,  he    found    at 

Monmouth  .,.,.,  ,, 

at  Taunton.  1  auutou  a  reccptiou  which  might  well  en- 
courage him  to  hope  that  his  enterprise  would  have  a 
prosperous  issue.  Taunton,  like  most  other  towns  in 
the  south  of  England,  was,  in  that  age,  more  important 
than  at  present.  Those  towns  have  not  indeed  de- 
clined. On  the  contrary,  they  are,  with  very  few  ex- 
ceptions, larger  and  richer,  better  built  and  better  ^ 
peopled,  than  in  the  seventeenth  century.  But,  though  |. 
they  have    positively  advanced,   they  have   relatively 

1  1  Jac.  II.  c.  17.     Lords'  Journals,  July  2.  1G85. 

2  Lords'  and  Commons'  Journals,  July  2.  1G85. 


1M6.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  181 

gone  back.  They  have  been  far  outstripped  in  wealth 
and  population  by  the  great  manufacturing  and  com- 
mercial cities  of  the  north,  cities  which,  in  the  time  of 
the  Stuarts,  were  but  beginning  to  be  known  as  seats 
of  industry.  When  Monmouth  marched  into  Taunton 
it  was  an  eminently  prosperous  place.  Its  markets  were 
plentifully  supplied.  It  was  a  celebrated  seat  of  the 
woollen  manufacture.  The  people  boasted  that  they  lived 
in  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey.  Nor  was  this 
language  held  only  by  partial  natives  ;  for  ever}^  stran- 
ger who  climbed  the  graceful  tower  of  St.  Mary  Mag- 
dalene owned  that  he  saw  beneath  him  the  most  fertile 
of  English  valleys.  It  was  a  country  rich  with  orchards 
and  green  pastures,  among  which  were  scattered,  in 
gay  abundance,  manor  houses,  cottages,  and  village 
spires.  The  townsmen  had  long  leaned  towards  Pres- 
byterian diviiiity  and  Whig  politics.  In  the  great  civil 
war  Taunton  had,  through  all  vicissitudes,  adhered  to 
the  Parliament,  had  been  twice  closely  besieged  by 
Goring,  and  had  been  twice  defended  with  heroic  valour 
by  Robert  Blake,  afterwards  the  renowned  Admiral  of 
the  Ctmimonwealth.  Whole  streets  had  been  burned 
down  by  the  mortars  and  grenades  of  the  Cavaliers. 
Food  had  been  so  scarce  that  the  resolute  governor  had 
announced  his  intention  to  put  the  garrison  on  rations 
of  horse  flesh.  But  the  spirit  of  the  town  had  never 
been  subdued  either  by  fire  or  by  hunger.^ 

Tiie  Restoration  had  produced  no  effect  on  the  tem- 
per of  the  Taunton  men.  They  had  still  continued  to 
celebrate  the  anniversary  of  the  happy  day  on  which 
the  siege  laid  to  their  town  bv  the  roval  army  had  been 
raised  ;  and  their  stubborn  attacnment  to  the  old  cause 
had  excited  so  much  fear  and  resentment  at  Whitehall 

1  Savage's  edition  of  Toulmin's  History  of  Taunton. 


182  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

that,  by  a  royal  order,  tlieir  moat  had  been  filled  up, 
and  their  wall  demolished  to  the  foundation. ^  The  pu- 
ritanical spirit  had  been  kept"  up  to  the  height  among 
them  by  the  precepts  and  example  of  one  of  the  most 
celebrated  of  the  dissenting  clergy,  Joseph  Alleine. 
AUeine  was  the  author  of  a  tract,  entitled,  An  Alarm 
to  the  Unconverted,  which  is  still  popular  both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  America.  From  the  gaol  to  which  he  was 
consigned  by  the  victonous  Cavaliers,  he  addressed  to 
his  loving  friends  at  Taunton  many  epistles  breathing 
the  spirit  of  a  truly  heroic  piety.  His  frame  soon  sank 
under  the  effects  of  study,  toil,  and  persecution  :  but 
his  memory  was  long  cherished  with  exceeding  love 
and  reverence  by  those  whom  he  had  exhorted  and 
catechized.^ 

The  children  of  the  men  who,  forty  years  before,  had 
manned  the  ramparts  of  Taunton  against  the  Royalists, 
now  welcomed  Monmouth  with  transports  of  joy  and 
affection.  Every  door  and  window  was  adorned  with 
wreaths  of  flowers.  No  man  appeared  in  the  streets 
without  wearing  in  his  hat  a  green  bough,  the  badge  of 
the  popular  cause.  Damsels  of  the  best  families  in  the 
town  wove  colours  for  the  insurgents.  One  flag  in 
particular  was  embroidered  gorgeously  with  emblems 
of  royal  dignity,  and  was  offered  to  Monmouth  by  a 
train  of  young  girls.  He  received  the  gift  with  the 
winning  courtesy  which  distinguished  him.  The  lady 
who  headed  the  procession  presented  him  also  with  a 
small  Bible  of  great  price.  He  took  it  with  a  show  of 
reverence.  "  I  come,"  he  said,  "  to  defend  the  truths 
contained  in  this  book,  and  to  seal  them,  if  it  must  be 
BO,  with  my  blood."  ^ 

1  Sprat's  True  Account;  Touhnin's  Historj'  of  Taunton. 

2  Life  and  Death  of  Joseph  Alleine,  1672;  Noncouformists'  Memorial. 
«  Harl.  MS.  700G.;  Oldmixon,  702.;  Eachard,  iii.  763. 


1686,]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  18B 

But,  while  Monmouth  eujoyed  the  applause  of  the 
multitude,  he  could  not  but  perceive,  with  concern  and 
apprehension,  that  the  higher  classes  were,  with  scarcely 
an  exception,  hostile  to  his  undertaking,  and  that  no 
rising  had  taken  place  except  in  the  counties  where  he 
had  himself  appeared.  He  had  been  assui-ed  by  agents, 
who  professed  to  have  derived  their  information  from 
Wildman,  that  the  whole  Whig  aristocracy  was  eager 
to  take  arms.  Nevertheless  more  than  a  week  had 
now  elapsed  since  the  blue  standard  had  been  set  up  at 
Lyme.  Day  labourers,  small  farmers,  shopkeepers,  ap- 
prentices, dissenting  preachers,  had  flocked  to  the  rebel 
camp  :  but  not  a  single  peer,  baronet,  or  knight,  not  a 
single  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  scarcely 
any  esquire  of  sufficient  note  to  have  ever  been  in  the 
commission  of  the  peace,  had  joined  the  invaders.  Fer- 
guson, who,  ever  since  the  death  of  Charles,  had  been 
Monmouth's  evil  angel,  had  a  suggestion  ready.  The 
Duke  had  put  himself  into  a  false  position  by  declining 
the  royal  title.  Had  he  declared  himself  sovereign  of 
England,  his  cause  would  have  worn  a  show  of  legality. 
At  present  it  was  impossible  to  reconcile  his  Declara- 
tion with  the  principles  of  the  constitution.  It  was 
clear  that  either  Monmouth  or  his  uncle  was  rifrhtful 
King.  Monmouth  did  not  venture  to  pronounce  him- 
self the  rightful  King,  and  yet  denied  that  his  uncle 
was  so.  Those  who  foucjht  for  James  fouirht  for  the 
only  person  who  ventured  to  claim  the  throne,  and 
were  therefore  clearly  in  their  duty,  according  to  the 
laws  of  the  realm.  Those  who  fought  for  Monmouth 
fought  for  some  vmknown  ])olity,  which  was  to  be  set 
up  by  a  convention  not  yet  in  existence.  None  could 
wonder  that  men  of  high  rank  and  ample  fortune  stood 
aloof  from  an  enterprise  which  tlireatened  with  destruc- 


184  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

tlon  that  system  in  the  permanence  of  which  they  were 
deeply  interested.  If  the  Duke  would  assert  his  legiti- 
macy and  assume  the  crown,  he  would  at  once  remove 
this  objection.  The  question  would  cease  to  be  a  ques- 
tion between  the  old  constitution  and  a  new  constitu- 
tion. It  would  be  merely  a  question  of  hereditaiy  right 
between  two  princes. 

On  such  grounds  as  these  Ferguson,  almost  imme- 
H?  takes  the  diately  after  the  landing,  had  earnestly  pressed 
tit.«  of  King,  ^jjg  ijxike  to  proclaim  liimself  King  ;  and  Grey 
was  of  the  same  opinion.  Monmouth  had  been  very 
willing  to  take  this  advice  ;  but  Wade  and  other  repub- 
licans had  been  refractory  ;  and  their  chief,  with  his 
usual  pliability,  had  yielded  to  their  arguments.  At 
Taunton  the  subject  was  revived.  Monmouth  talked 
in  private  with  the  dissentients,  assured  them  that  he 
saw  no  other  way  of  obtaining  the  support  of  any  por- 
tion of  the  aristocracy,  and  succeetled  in  extorting 
their  reluctant  consent.  On  the  morning  of  the  twen- 
tieth of  June  he  was  proclaimed  in  the  market  place 
of  Taunton.  His  followers  repeated  his  new  title  with 
affectionate  dehght.  But,  as  some  confusion  might  have 
arisen  if  he  had  been  called  King  James  the  Second, 
they  commonly  used  the  strange  appellation  of  King 
Monmouth  ;  and  by  this  name  their  unhappy  favourite 
was  often  mentioned  in  the  western  counties,  within 
the  memory  of  persons  still  living.^ 

Within  twenty-four  hours  after  he  had  assumed  the 
regal  title,  he  put  forth  several  proclamations  headed 
with  his  sign  manual.  By  one  of  these  he  set  a  price 
on  the  head  of  his  I'ival.     Another  declared  the  Parlia- 

1  Wade's  Confession;  Goodenough's  Confession,  Harl.  MS.  1152.;  Old- 
inixon,  702.  Ferguson's  denial  is  quite  undeserving  of  credit.  A  copy  of 
the  proclamation  is  in  the  Harl.  MS.  7006. 


II 


1686]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  185 

mcnt  then  sittinix  at  Westminster  an  unlawful  assem- 
bly,  and  commanded  the  members  to  disperse.  The 
tliird  forbade  the  people  to  pay  taxes  to  the  usurper. 
The  fourth  pronounced  Albemarle  a  traitor.^ 

Albemarle  transmitted  these  proclamations  to  London 
merely  as  specimens  of  folly  and  impertinence.  They 
produced  no  effect,  except  wonder  and  contempt ;  nor 
had  Monmouth  any  reason  to  think  that  the  assump- 
tion of  royalty  had  improved  his  position.  Only  a 
week  had  elapsed  since  he  had  solemnly  bound  him- 
self not  to  take  the  crown  till  a  free  Parliament  should 
have  acknowledged  his  rights.  By  breaking  that  en- 
gagement he  had  incurred  the  imputation  of  levity,  if 
not  of  perfidy.  The  class  which  he  had  hoped  to  con- 
ciliate still  stood  aloof.  The  reasons  which  prevented 
the  great  Whio-  lords  and  oentlemen  from  recognising 
him  as  their  Kine  were  at  least  as  strong  as  those  which 
had  prevented  them  from  rallying  round  him  as  their 
Captain  General.  They  disliked  indeed  the  person,  the 
religion,  and  the  politics  of  James.  But  James  was  no 
longer  young.  His  eldest  daughter  was  justly  popular. 
She  was  attached  to  the  reformed  faith.  She  was  mar- 
ried to  a  j)rince  who  was  the  hereditary  chief  of  the  Prot- 
estants of  the  Continent,  to  a  rrince  who  had  been  bred 
in  a  republic,  and  whose  sentiments  were  supposed  to 
be  such  as  became  a  constitutional  King.  Was  it  wise 
to  incur  the  horrors  of  civil  war,  for  the  mere  chance 
of  being  able  to  effect  immediately  what  nature  would, 
without  bloodshed,  without  any  violation  of  law,  effect, 
in  all  ]>rob;ibility,  before  many  years  should  have  ex- 
])ired?  Perhaps  there  might  be  I'casons  for  pulling  down 
James.      But  what  reason  could  be  given  for  setting 

1  Copies  of  the  last  throe  proclainatinns  are  in  the  British  Museum.    Ilarl. 
MS.  700G.      I'he  lirst  I  have  never  seen;  but  it  is  mentioned  by  Wade. 


186  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

up  Monmouth?  To  exclude  a  prince  from  the  throne 
on  account  of  unfitness  was  a  course  agreeable  to  Whig 
principles.  But  on  no  principle  could  it  be  proper  to 
exclude  rightful  heirs,  who  were  admitted  to  be,  not 
only  blameless,  but  eminently  qualified  for  the  highest 
])ublic  trust.  That  Monmouth  was  legitimate,  nay, 
lliat  he  thought  himself  legitimate,  intelligent  men  could 
not  believe.  He  was  therefore  not  merely  an  usurper, 
but  an  usurper  of  the  worst  sort,  an  impostor.  If  he 
made  out  any  semblance  of  a  case,  he  could  do  so  only 
by  means  of  forgery  and  perjury.  All  honest  and  sen- 
sible persons  were  unwilling  to  see  a  fraud  which,  if 
practised  to  obtain  an  estate,  would  have  been  punished 
with  the  scourge  and  the  pillory,  rewarded  with  the 
English  crown.  To  the  old  nobility  of  the  realm  it 
seemed  insupportable  tliat  the  bastard  of  Lucy  Walters 
should  be  set  up  high  above  the  lawful  descendants  of 
the  Fitzalans  and  De  Veres.  Those  who  were  capable 
of  looking  forward  must  have  seeu  that,  if  Monmouth 
should  succeed  in  overpowering  the  existing  govern- 
ment, there  would  still  remain  a  war  between  him  and 
the  House  of  Orange,  a  war  which  might  last  longer 
and  produce  more  misery  than  the  war  of  the  Roses,  a 
war  which  might  probably  break  up  the  Protestants  of 
Europe  into  hostile  parties,  might  arm  England  and 
Holland  against  each  other,  and  might  make  both  those 
countries  an  easy  prey  to  France.  The  opinion,  there- 
fore, of  almost  all  the  leading  Whigs  seems  to  have 
been  that  Monmouth's  enterprise  could  not  fail  to  end 
in  some  great  disaster  to  the  nation,  but  that,  on  the 
whole,  his  defeat  w^ould  be  a  less  disaster  than  his 
victory. 

It  was  not  only  by  the  inaction  of  the  Whig  aristoc- 
racy that  the  invaders  were  disappointed.     The  wealth 


II 


M85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  187 

and  power  of  London  had  sufficed  in  the  preceding 
generation,  and  might  again  suffice,  to  turn  the  scale 
in  a  civil  conflict.  The  Londoners  had  formerly  given 
many  proofs  of  their  hatred  of  Po])ery  and  of  their 
affi^ction  for  the  Protestant  Duke.  He  had  too  readily 
believed  that,  as  soon  as  he  landed,  there  would  be  a 
rising  in  the  capital.  But,  though  advices  came  down 
to  him  that  many  thousands  of  the  citizens  had  been 
enrolled  as  volunteers  for  the  good  cause,  nothing  was 
done.  The  plain  ti'utli  Avas  that  the  agitators  who  had 
urged  him  to  invade  England,  who  had  promised  to  rise 
on  the  first  signal,  and  who  had  perhaps  imagined,  while 
the  danger  was  remote,  that  they  should  have  the  cour- 
age to  keep  their  promise,  lost  heart  when  the  critical 
time  drew  near.  Wildman's  fright  was  such  that  he 
seemed  to  have  lost  his  vrnderstanding.  The  craven 
Danvers  at  first  excused  his  inaction  by  saying  that  he 
would  not  take  up  arms  till  Monmouth  was  proclaimed 
King,  and,  when  Monmouth  had  been  proclaimed  King, 
turned  round  and  declared  that  good  republicans  were 
absolved  from  all  eno-ao-ements  to  a  leader  who  had  so 
shamefully  broken  faith.  In  every  age  the  vilest  speci- 
mens of  human  nature  are  to  be  found  among;  dema- 
gogues.^ 

On  the  dav  followino-  that  on  which  Monmouth  had 
assumed  the  regal  title  he  marched  from  Taunton  to 
Bridgewater.  His  own  spirits,  it  was  remarked,  were 
not  high.  The  acclamations  of  the  devoted  thousands 
who  surrounded  him  wherever  he  turned  could  not 
dispel  the  gloom  which  sate  on  his  brow.  Those 
who  had  seen  him  during  his  progress  through  Somer- 
setshire five  years  before  could  not  now  observe  with- 
out pity  the  traces  of  distress  and  anxiety  on  those 
1  Grey's  Narrative;  Ferguson's  MS.,  Eachard,  iii.  754. 


188  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Y, 

soft  and  pleasing  features  which  had  won  so  many 
hearts.^ 

Ferguson  was  in  a  very  different  temper.  With  this 
man's  knavery  was  strangely  mingled  an  eccentric  van- 
ity which  resembled  madness.  The  thought  that  he 
had  raised  a  rebellion  and  bestowed  a  crown  had  turned 
his  head.  He  swaggered  about  brandishing  his  naked 
sword,  and  crying  to  the  crowd  of  spectators  who  had 
assembled  to  see  the  army  march  out  of  Taunton, 
"  Look  at  me  !  You  have  heard  of  me.  I  am  Fer- 
guson, the  famous  Ferguson,  the  Ferguson  for  whose 
head  so  many  hundred  pounds  have  been  offered." 
And  this  man,  at  once  unprincipled  and  brainsick,  had 
in  his  keeping  the  understanding  and  the  conscience  of 
the  unhappy  Monmouth.^ 

Bridgewater  was  one  of  the  few  towns  which  still 
Hisreeep-  had  somo  Whig  magistrates.  The  mavor 
Bridgewater.  and  aldermen  came  in  their  robes  to  welcome 
the  Duke,  walked  before  him  in  procession  to  the  high 
cross,  and  there  proclaimed  him  King.  His  troops 
found  excellent  quarters,  and  were  furnished  with 
necessaries  at  httle  or  no  cost  by  the  people  of  the 
town  and  neighbourhood.  He  took  up  his  residence 
in  the  Castle,  a  building  which  had  been  honoured 
by  several  royal  visits.  In  the  Castle  field  his  army 
was  encamped.  It  now  consisted  of  about  six  thou- 
sand men,  and  might  easily  have  been  increased  to 
double  the  number,  but  for  the  want  of  arms.  The 
Duke  had  brouoht  with  him  from  the  Continent  but  a 
scanty  supply  of  pikes  and  muskets.  Many  of  his  fol- 
lowers had,  therefore,  no  other  weapons  than  such  as 
could  be  fashioned  out  of  the  tools  which  they  had  used 

1  Persecution  Exposed,  by  John  Whiting. 

2  Harl.  MS.  6845. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  189 

in  husbandly  or  mining.  Of  these  rude  implements  of 
war  the  most  formidable  was  made  by  fastening  the 
blade  of  a  scythe  erect  on  a  strong  pole.^  The  tithing 
men  of  the  country  round  Taunton  and  Bridgewater 
received  orders  to  search  everywhere  for  scythes  and 
to  bring  all  that  could  be  found  to  the  camp.  It  was 
impossible,  however,  even  with  the  help  of  these  con- 
trivances, to  supply  the  demand  ;  and  great  numbers 
who  were  desirous  to  enlist  were  sent  awav.^ 

The  foot  were  divided  into  six  regiments.  Many  of 
the  men  had  been  in  the  militia,  and  still  wore  their 
uniforms,  red  and  yellow.  The  cavalry  were  about  a 
thousand  in  number  :  but  most  of  them  had  only  large 
colts,  such  as  were  then  bi'ed  in  great  herds  on  the 
marshes  of  Somersetshire  for  the  purpose  of  supplyinf^ 
London  with  coach  horses  and  cart  horses.  These  ani- 
mals were  so  far  from  being  fit  for  any  military  purpose 
that  they  had  not  yet  learned  to  obey  the  bridle,  and 
became  ungovernable  as  soon  as  they  heard  a  gun  fired 
or  a  drum  beaten.  A  small  body  guard  of  forty  young 
men,  well  ai'med  and  mounted  at  their  own  charo;e,  at- 
tended  Monmouth.  The  people  of  Bridgewater,  who 
were  enriched  by  a  thriving  coast  trade,  furnished  him 
with  a  small  sum  of  money.^ 

All  this  time  the  forces  of  the  government  were  fast 
assembling.  On  the  west  of  the  rebel  army  p^^  aratiow 
Albemarle   still  kept  too;ether  a  larse  body  "^^^'^s^y- 

'  f'  »  J     erniueiit  to 

of  Devonshire  militiu.  On  the  east  the  train-  °pp''^"  '"">• 
bands  of  Wiltshire  had  mustered  under  the  command 
of  Thomas  Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke.     On  the  north 

1  One  of  tlu'se  weapons  nia_v  still  be  seen  in  the  Tower. 

2  Grey's  Narrativ*;  Pasciiall's  Narrative  in  the  Appendix  to  Ileywood'i 
Vindication. 

8  Oldmixon,  702. 


190  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

east,  Henry  Somerset,  Duke  of  Beaufort,  was  in  arms. 
The  power  of  Beaufort  bore  some  faint  resemblance  to 
that  of  the  great  barons  of  the  fifteenth  century.  He 
was  President  of  Wales  and  Lord  Lieutenant  of  four 
English  counties.  His  official  tours  through  the  ex- 
tensive region  in  which  he  represented  the  majesty  of 
the  throne  were  scarcely  inferior  in  pomp  to  royal  prog- 
resses. His  household  at  Badminton  was  regulated 
after  the  fashion  of  an  earlier  generation.  The  land  to 
a  great  extent  round  his  pleasure  grounds  was  in  his 
own  hands  ;  and  the  labourers  who  cultivated  it  formed 
part  of  his  family.  Nine  tables  were  every  day  spread 
under  his  roof  for  two  hundred  persons.  A  crowd  of 
gentlemen  and  pages  were  under  the  orders  of  his 
steward.  A  whole  troop  of  cavalry  obeyed  the  master 
of  the  horse.  The  fame  of  the  kitchen,  the  cellar,  the 
kennel  and  the  stables  was  spread  over  all  England. 
The  gentry,  many  miles  round,  were  proud  of  the 
magnificence  of  their  great  neighbour,  and  were  at  the 
same  time  charmed  by  his  affability  and  good  nature. 
He  was  a  zealous  Cavalier  of  the  old  school.  At  this 
crisis,  therefore,  he  used  his  whole  influence  and  au- 
thority in  support  of  the  crown,  and  occupied  Bristol 
with  the  trainbands  of  Gloucestershire,  who  seem  to 
have  been  better  disciplined  than  most  other  troops  of 
that  description. 1 

In  the  counties  more  remote  from  Somersetshire  the 
supporters  of  the  throne  were  on  the  alert.  The  militia 
of  Sussex  began  to  march  westward,  under  the  com- 
mand of  Richard,  Lord  Lumley,  who,  though  he  had 
lately  been  converted  from  the  Roman  Catholic  religion, 

I  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  132. ;  Accounts  of  Beaufort's  progress  through 
Wales  and  the  neighbouring  counties  are  in  the  Loudon  Gazettes  of  July 
1684;  Letter  of  Beaufort  to  Clarendon,  June  19.  1685. 


1886.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  191 

was  still  firm  in  his  allegiance  to  a  Roman  Catholic 
kino-.  James  Bertie,  Earl  of  Abingdon,  called  ont  the 
array  of  Oxfordshire.  John  Fell,  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
■who  was  also  Dean  of  Christchurch,  summoned  the 
undergraduates  of  his  University  to  take  arms  for 
the  crown.  The  gownsmen  crowded  to  give  in  their 
names.  Christchurch  alone  furnished  near  a  hundred 
pikemen  and  musketeers.  Young  noblemen  and  gen- 
tlemen commoners  acted  as  officers ;  and  the  eldest  son 
of  the  Lord  Lieutenant  was  Colonel.' 

But  it  was  chiefly  on  the  regular  troops  that  the 
King  relied.  Churchill  had  been  sent  westward  with 
the  Blues  ;  and  Feversham  was  following  Avith  all  the 
forces  that  could  be  spared  from  the  neighbourhood  of 
London.  A  courier  had  started  for  Holland  with  a 
letter  directing  Skelton  instantly  to  request  that  the 
three  English  regiments  in  the  Dutch  seiwice  might 
be  sent  to  the  Thames.  When  the  request  was  made, 
the  party  hostile  to  the  House  of  Orange,  headed  by 
the  deputies  of  Amsterdam,  again  tried  to  cause  delay. 
But  the  energy  of  William,  who  had  almost  as  much  at 
stake  as  James,  and  who  saw  Monmouth's  progress  with 
serious  uneasiness,  bore  down  opposition  ;  and  in  a  few 
days  tlie  troops  sailed.^  The  three  Scotch  regiments 
were  already  in  England.  They  had  arrived  at  Graves- 
end  in  excellent  condition,  and  James  had  reviewed 
them  on  Blackheath.  He  repeatedly  declared  to  the 
Dutch  Ambassador  that  he  had  never  in  his  life  seen 
finer  or  better  disciplined  soldiers,  and  had  expressed 
the  warmest  gratitude  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  the 
States  for  so  valuable  and  seasonable  a  reinforcement. 

1  Bishop  Fell  to  Clarendon,  June  20.;  Abingdon  to  Clarendon,  June  20. 
25,  26.  1685;  Lansdowne  MS.  846. 
«  Avaux,  July  i\-  ^.  1685. 
VOL.   II.  13 


192  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

This  satisfaction,  however,  was  not  unmixed.  Excel- 
lently as  the  men  went  through  their  drill,  they  were 
not  untainted  with  Dutch  politics  and  Dutch  divinity. 
One  of  them  was  shot  and  another  flogged  for  di'ink- 
ing  the  Duke  of  Monmouth's  health.  It  was  there- 
fore not  thought  advisable  to  place  them  in  the  post 
of  danger.  They  were  kept  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  London  till  the  end  of  the  campaign.  But  their 
arrival  enabled  the  King  to  send  to  the  West  some 
infantry  which  would  otherwise  have  been  wanted  in 
the  capital.^ 

While  the  government  was  thus  prepai'ing  for  a  con- 
flict with  the  rebels  in  the  field,  precautions  of  a  differ- 
ent kind  were  not  neglected.  In  London  alone  two 
hundred  of  those  persons  who  were  thought  most  likely 
to  be  at  the  head  of  a  Whig  movement  were  arrested. 
Among  the  prisoners  were  some  merchants  of  great 
note.  Every  man  who  was  obnoxious  to  the  court 
went  in  fear.  A  general  gloom  overhung  the  capital. 
Business  languished  on  the  Exchange  ;  and  the  theatres 
were  so  generally  deserted  that  a  new  opera,  written 
by  Dryden,  and  set  off  by  decorations  of  unprece- 
dented magnificence,  was  Avithdi-awn,  because  the  re- 
ceipts would  not  cover  the  expenses  of  the  perform- 
ance.^ The  magistrates  and  clergy  were  everywhere 
active.  The  Dissenters  were  everywhere  closely 
observed.  In  Cheshire  and  Shropshire  a  fierce  per- 
secution raged :  in  Northamptonshire  arrests  were 
numerous ;  and  the  gaol  of  Oxford  was  crowded  with 
prisoners.  No  Puritan  divine,  however  moderate  his 
opinions,  however  guarded  his  conduct,  could  feel  any 

1  Van   Citters,  ^£lB.,  July  ^%.,  July  ^.  1085;  Avaux  Neg.  July  iV-i 
L'>ii'l(iu  Gazette,  July  0. 
3  Barillou,  July  yq.  1685 ;  Scott's  preface  to  Albion  and  Albatiius. 


1885.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  193 

confidence  that  he  should  not  be  torn  from  his  family 
and  flung  into  a  dungeon.^ 

Meanwhile  Monmouth  advanced  from  Brido-cwater, 
harassed  through  the  whole  march  by  Churchill,  who 
ap|)ears  to  have  done  all  that,  with  a  handful  of  men, 
it  was  possible  for  a  brave  and  skilful  officer  to  effect. 
The  rebel  army,  much  annoyed  both  by  the  enemy  and 
by  a  heavy  fall  of  rain,  halted  in  the  evening  of  the 
twenty-second  of  June  at  Glastonbury.  The  houses 
of  the  little  town  did  not  afford  shelter  for  so  laro;e  a 
force.  Some  of  the  troops  were  therefore  quartered 
in  the  churches,  and  others  lighted  their  fires  among 
the  venerable  ruins  of  the  Abbey,  once  the  wealthiest 
religious  house  in  our  island.  From  Glastonbury  the 
Duke  marched  to  Wells,  and  from  Wells  to  Shepton 
Mallet.2 

Hitherto  he  seems  to  have  wandered  from  place  to 
place  with  no  other  object  than  that  of  col-  nis  design 
lecting  troops.  It  was  now  necessary  for  ""^"^'o'- 
him  to  form  some  plan  of  military  operations.  His 
first  scheme  was  to  seize  Bristol.  Many  of  the  chief 
inhabitants  of  that  important  place  were  Whigs.  One 
of  the  ramifications  of  the  Whig  plot  had  extended 
thither.  The  garrison  consisted  only  of  the  Glouces- 
tershire trainbands.  If  Beaufort  and  his  rustic  fol- 
lOAvers  could  be  overpowered  before  the  regular  troops 
arrived,  the  rebels  would  at  once  find  themselves  pos- 
sessed of  ample  pecuniaiy  resources  :  the  credit  of 
Monmouth's   arms   would   be   raised  ;  and  his  friends 

throughout  the  kincrdom  would  be  encouraged  to  de- 
cs o  & 

1  Abingdon  to  Clarendon,  June  2'J.  1685.  Life  of  Philip  Henry,  by 
Bates. 

*  r.oiulon  (mzctte,  .luno  22.  and  June  25.  1685;  Wade's  Confession; 
Oldinixon,  703.;  Hail.  MS.  6845. 


194  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

clare  themselves.  Bi'istol  had  fortifications  which,  on 
the  north  of  the  Avon  towards  Gloucestershire,  were 
weak,  but  on  the  south  towards  Somersetshire  were 
much  stronger.  It  was  therefore  determined  that  the 
attack  should  be  made  on  the  Gloucestershire  side. 
But  for  this  purpose  it  was  necessary  to  take  a  circui- 
tous route,  and  to  cross  the  Avon  at  Keynsham.  The 
bridge  at  Keynsham  had  been  partly  demolished  by  the 
militia,  and  was  at  present  impassable.  A  detach- 
ment was  therefore  sent  forward  to  make  the  neces- 
sary repairs.  The  other  troops  followed  more  slowly, 
and  on  the  evening  of  the  twenty-fourth  of  June  halted 
for  repose  at  Pensford.  At  Pensford  they  were  only 
five  miles  from  the  Somersetshire  side  of  Bristol ;  but 
the  Gloucestershire  side,  which  could  be  reached  only 
by  going  round  through  Keynsham,  was  distant  a  long 
day's  march. ^ 

That  night  was  one  of  great  tumult  and  expectation 
in  Bristol,  The  pailisans  of  Monmouth  knew  that  he 
was  almost  within  sight  of  their  city,  and  imagined  that 
he  would  be  among  them  before  daybreak.  About  an 
hour  after  sunset  a  merchantman  lying  at  the  quay 
took  fire.  Such  an  occurrence,  in  a  port  crowded  with 
shipping,  could  not  but  excite  great  alarm.  The  whole 
I'iver  was  in  commotion.  The  sti'eets  were  crowded. 
Seditious  cries  were  heard  amidst  the  darkness  and 
confusion.  It  was  afterwards  asserted,  both  bv  Whijxs 
and  by  Tories,  that  the  fire  had  been  kindled  by  the 
friends  of  Monmouth,  in  the  hope  that  the  trainbands 
would  be  busied  in  preventing  the  conflagration  from 
spreading,  and  that  in  the  meantime  the  rebel  army 
would  make  a  bold  push,  and  would  enter  the  city  on 
the  Somersetshire  side.     If  such  was  the  design  of  the 

1  Wade's  Confession. 


16«5.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  19ft 

iiicendlaries,  it  completely  failed.  Beaufort,  instead  of 
sending  his  men  to  the  quay,  kept  them  all  night  drawn 
up  under  arms  round  the  beautiful  church  of  St.  Mary 
Redcliff,  on  the  south  of  the  Avon.  He  would  see 
Bristol  burned  down,  he  said,  nay,  he  would  burn  it 
down  himself,  rather  than  that  it  should  be  occupied  by 
tiaitors.  He  was  able,  with  the  help  of  some  regular 
cavalry  which  had  joined  him  from  Chippenham  a  few 
hours  before,  to  prevent  an  insurrection.  It  might 
have  been  beyond  his  power  at  once  to  overawe  the 
malecontents  within  the  walls  and  to  repel  an  attack 
from  without :  but  no  such  attack  was  made.  The 
fire,  which  caused  so  much  commotion  at  Bristol,  was 
distinctly  seen  at  Pensford.  Monmouth,  however,  did 
not  think  it  expedient  to  change  his  plan.  He  re- 
mained quiet  till  sunrise,  and  then  marched  to  Keyns- 
ham.  There  he  found  the  bridge  repaired.  He  de- 
termined to  let  his  army  rest  during  the  afternoon,  and, 
as  soon  as  night  came,  to  proceed  to  Bristol.^ 

But  it  was  too  late.  The  Kino;'s  forces  were  now 
near  at  hand.  Colonel  Oglethorpe,  at  the  head  of 
about  a  hundred  men  of  the  Life  Guards,  dashed  into 
Keynsham,  scattered  two  troops  of  rebel  horse  which 
ventured  to  oppose  him,  and  retired  after  inflicting 
much   injury  and  sufferino;  little.     In  these  uereiin- 

''       ''         .  ,      ^    .  qulshes  that 

cu'cumstances    it  was    thouglit   necessary  to  design, 
ri'linquish  the  design  on  Bristol.^ 

But  what,  was  to  be  done?  Several  schemes  were 
l)r()))osed  and  discussed.  It  was  suggested  that  Mon- 
mouth might  hasten  to  Gloucester,  might  cross  the 
Sev^.rn  there,  might  break  down  the   bridge   behind 

1  Wade's  Confession;    Oldniixon,  703.;    Ilarl.   MS.  6845.;    Charge  of 
Jeffreys  to  the  grand  jun'  of  Bristol,  Sept.  21.  1685. 
*  London  Gazette,  June  29.  1685;  Wade'«  Confession. 


196  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch,  V. 

him,  and,  with  his  right  flank  protected  by  the  river 
might  march  through  Worcestershire  into  Shropshii-e 
and  Cheshire.  He  had  formerly  made  a  progress 
throuoh  tliose  counties,  and  had  been  received  there 
with  as  much  enthusiasm  as  in  Somersetshire  and  Dev- 
onshire. His  pi"esence  might  revive  the  zeal  of  his  old 
friends  ;  and  his  army  might  in  a  few  days  be  swollen 
to  double  its  present  numbers. 

On  full  consideration,  however,  it  appeai'ed  that  this 
plan,  though  specious,  was  impracticable.  The  rebels 
were  ill  shod  for  such  work  as  they  had  lately  under- 
gone, and  were  exhausted  by  toiling,  day  after  day, 
througli  deep  mud  under  heavy  rain.  Harassed  and 
impeded  as  they  would  be  at  every  stage  by  the 
enemy's  cavalry,  they  could  not  hope  to  reach  Glouces- 
ter without  being  overtaken  by  the  main  body  of  the 
royal  troops,  and  forced  to  a  general  action  under  every 
disadvantage. 

Then  it  was  proposed  to  enter  Wiltshire.  Persons 
who  professed  to  know  that  county  well  assured  the 
Duke  that  he  would  be  joined  there  by  such  strong 
reinforcements  as  Avould  make  it  safe  for  him  to  give 
battle.^ 

He  took  this  advice,  and  turned  towards  Wiltshire. 
He  first  summoned  Bath.  But  Bath  was  strongly 
garrisoned  for  the  King ;  and  Feversham  was  fast  ap- 
proaching. The  rebels,  therefore,  made  no  attempt  on 
the  walls,  but  hastened  to  Philip's  Norton,  whei'e  they 
halted  on  the  evening  of  the  twenty-sixth  of  June. 

Feversham  followed  them  thither.  Early  on  the 
morning  of  the  twenty-seventh  they  were  alarmed  by 
tidings  that  he  was  close  at  hand.  They  got  into  order, 
and  hned  the  hedges  leading  to  the  town. 

1  Wade's  Confession. 


1«86.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  197 

The  advanced  guard  of  the  royal  army  soon  appeared. 
It  consisted  of  about  five  hundi'ed  men,  cx)mmanded  by 
the  Duke  of  Grafton,  a  youth  of  bold  spirit  and  rough 
manners,  who  was  probably  eager  to  sliow  that  he  had 
no  share  in  the  disloyal  schemes  of  his  half  brother. 
Grafton  soon  found  himself  in  a  deep  lane  with  fences 
on  both  sides  of  him,  from  which  a  galling  fire  of  mus- 
ketry was  kept  up.  Still  he  pushed  boldly  on  till  he 
came    to    the    entrance    of  Philip's    Norton,   skinnisuat 

1  1  •        1  Philip's 

There  his  way  was  crossed  by  a  barricade,  Norton. 
fi'om  which  a  third  fire  met  him  full  in  front.  His 
men  now  lost  heart,  and  made  the  best  of  their  way 
back.  Before  they  got  out  of  the  lane  more  than  a 
hundred  of  them  had  been  killed  or  wounded.  Graf- 
ton's retreat  was  intercepted  by  some  of  the  rebel  cav- 
alry :  but  he  cut  his  way  gallantly  through  them,  and 
came  off  safe.^ 

The  advanced  guard,  thus  repulsed,  fell  back  on  the 
main  body  of  the  royal  forces.  The  two  armies  were 
now  face  to  face  ;  and  a  few  shots  were  exchanged  that 
did  little  or  no  execution.  Neither  side  was  impatient 
to  come  to  action.  Feversham  did  not  \\nsh  to  figlit 
till  his  artillery  came  up,  and  fell  back  to  Bradford. 
Monmouth,  as  soon  as  the  night  closed  in,  quitted  his 
position,  marched  southward,  and  by  daybreak  arrived 
at  Frome,  where  he  hoped  to  find  reinforcements. 

Frome  was  as  zealous  in  his  caiise  as  either  Taunton 
or  Bridgewater,  but  could  do  nothing  to  serve  him. 
There  had  been  a  rising  a  few  days  before  ;  and  Mon- 
mouth's Declaration  had  been  posted  up  in  the  market 
])lace.  But  the  news  of  this  movement  had  been  car- 
ried to  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  Avho  lay  at  no  great 
distance  with  the  Wiltshire  militia.     He  had  instantly 

1  Loudon  Gazette,  Jul}-  2.  1G85;  Burillon,  July  ^  ;  Wade's  Confession 


198  HISTOEY   OP  ENGLAND.  [CM.  V. 

marched  to  Frome,  had  routed  a  mob  of  rustics  who, 
with  scythes  and  pitchforks,  attempted  to  oppose  him, 
had  entered  the  town  and  had  disarmed  the  inhabi- 
tants. No  weapons,  therefore,  were  left  there  ;  nor  was 
Monmouth  able  to  furnish  any.^ 

The  rebel  army  was  in  evil  case.     The  march  of  the 
Despondence  preceding  nio;ht  had  been  wearisome.     The 

of  Mon-  ^    .  . 

mouth.  rain   had  fallen   in  torrents  ;   and  the   roads 

had  been  mere  quagmires.  Nothing  was  heard  of  the 
promised  succours  from  Wiltshire.  One  messenger 
brought  news  that  Argyle's  forces  had  been  dispersed 
m  Scotland.  Another  reported  that  Feversham,  hav- 
ing been  joined  by  his  artillery,  was  about  to  advance. 
Monmouth  understood  war  too  well  not  to  know  that 
his  followers,  with  all  their  courage  and  all  their  zeal, 
were  no  match  for  regular  soldiers.  He  had  till  lately 
flattered  himself  with  the  hope  that  some  of  those  regi- 
ments Avhich  he  had  formerly  commanded  would  pass 
over  to  his  standard  :  but  that  hope  he  was  now  com- 
pelled to  relinquish.  His  heart  failed  him.  He  could 
scarcely  muster  firmness  enough  to  give  orders.  In 
his  misery  he  complained  bitterly  of  the  evil  counsel 
lors  who  had  induced  him  to  quit  his  happy  retreat  in 
Brabant.  Against  Wildman  in  particular  he  broke 
forth  iirto  violent  imprecations.^  And  now  an  igno- 
minious thought  rose  in  his  weak  and  agitated  mind. 
He  would  leave  to  the  mercy  of  the  government  the 
tliousands  who  had,  at  his  call  and  for  his  sake,  aban- 
doned their  quiet  fields  and  dwellings.  He  would  steal 
away  with  his  chief  officers,  would  gain  some  seaport 
before  his  flight  was  suspected,  would  escape  to  the 
Continent,    and    would   forget    liis   ambition    and   his 

1  London  Gazette,  June  29.  1685;  Van  Citters,  j^,    ^^. 
a  Harl.  MS.  6845. ;  Wade's  Confession. 


16M.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  199 

shame  in  the  arms  of  Lady  Went  worth.  He  seiionsly 
discussed  this  scheme  with  his  leading  advisers.  Some 
of  them,  trembhng  for  their  necks,  hstened  to  it  with 
approbation  :  but  Grey,  who,  by  the  admission  of  his 
detractors,  was  intrepid  everywhere  except  when 
swords  were  clashing  and  guns  going  off  around  him, 
opposed  the  dastardly  pro})Osition  with  great  ardour, 
and  implored  the  Duke  to  face  every  danger  rather 
than  requite  with  ingratitude  and  treachery  the  de- 
voted attachment  of  the  Western  peasantry'".-'- 

The  scheme  of  flight  was  abandoned :  but  it  was  not 
now  easy  to  form  any  plan  for  a  campaign.  To  advance 
towards  London  would  have  been  madness  ;  for  the 
road  lay  right  across  Salisbury  Plain  ;  and  on  that  vast 
open  space  regular  troops,  and  above  all  regular  cav- 
alry, would  have  acted  with  every  advantage  against 
undisciplined  men.  At  this  juncture  a  report  reached 
the  camp  that  the  rustics  of  the  marshes  near  Ax- 
bridge  had  risen  in  defence  of  the  Protestant  religion, 
had  armed  themselves  with  flails,  bludgeons,  and  pitch- 
forks, and  were  assemblino;  by  thousands  at  Bridge- 
water.  Monmouth  determined  to  return  thither,  and 
to  strengthen  himself  with  these  new  allies.^ 

The  rebels  accordingly  proceeded  to  Wells,  and  ar- 
rived there  in  no  amiable  temper.  They  were,  with 
few  exceptions,  hostile  to  Prelacy  ;  and  they  showed 
their  hostility  in  a  way  very  little  to  their  honour. 
They  not  only  tore  the  lead  from  the  roof  of  the  mafic- 
nificent  Cathedral  to  make  bullets,  an  act  for  which 
they  might  fairly  plead  the  necessities  of  war,  but 
wantonly  defaced  the  ornaments  of  the  building.  Grey 
with  difficulty  preserved  the  altar  from  the  insults  of 

1  Wade's  Confession;  Eacbard,  iii.  766. 
*  Wade's  Confession. 


200  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

some  ruffians  who  wished  to  carouse  round  it,  by  tak- 
ino;  his  stand  before  it  with  his  sword  drawn.^ 

On  Thui'sday,  the  second  of  July,  Monmouth  again 
He  returns  entered  Bridgewater,  in  circumstances  far 
water.  less    checrino;   than  those    in   which  he  had 

marched  thence  ten  days  before.  The  reinforcement 
which  he  found  there  was  inconsiderable.  The  royal 
army  was  close  upon  him.  At  one  moment  he  thought 
of  fortifying  the  town  ;  and  hundreds  of  labourers  were 
summoned  to  dig  trenches  and  throw  up  mounds.  Then 
his  mind  recurred  to  the  plan  of  marching  into  Chesh- 
ire, a  plan  which  he  had  rejected  as  impracticable  when 
he  was  at  Keynsham,  and  which  assuredly  was  not 
more  practicable  now  that  he  was  at  Bridgewater.^ 

While  he  was  thus  wavering  between  projects  equal- 
rhe  royal  ly  hopclcss,  the  King's  forces  came  in  sight, 
camps^at  They  consisted  of  about  two  thousand  five 
sedgemoor.  j^^^j^j^.gfj  regular  troops,  and  of  about  fifteen 
hundred  of  the  Wiltshire  militia.  Early  on  the  morn- 
ing of  Sunday,  the  fifth  of  July,  they  left  Somerton, 
and  pitched  their  tents  that  day  about  three  miles  from 
Bridgewater,  on  the  plain  of  Sedgemoor. 

Doctor  Peter  Mew,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  accompa- 
nied them.  This  prelate  had  in  his  youth  borne  arms 
for  Charles  the  First  against  the  Parliament.  Neither 
his  years  nor  his  profession  had  wholly  extinguished 
his  martial  ardour  ;  and  he  probably  thought  that  the 
appearance  of  a  father  of  the  Protestant  Church  in  the 
King's  camp  might  confirm  the  loyalty  of  some  honest 
men  who  were  wavering  between  their  horror  of  Pop- 
ery and  their  horror  of  rebellion. 

The  steeple  of  the  parish  church  of  Bridgewater  is 

1  London  Gazette,  July  6. 1685;  Van  Citters,  July  ^8^. ;  Oldmixon,  70* 

'  Wade's  Confession. 


Ifl85.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  201 

said  to  be  the  loftiest  in  Somersetshire,  and  commands 
a  wide  view  over  the  surrounding  country.  Mon- 
mouth, accompanied  by  some  of  his  officers,  went  up 
to  the  top  of  the  square  tower  from  which  the  s})ire 
ascends,  and  observed  through  a  telescope  the  position 
of  the  enemy.  Beneath  him  lay  a  flat  expanse,  now 
rlcli  with  cornfields  and  apple  trees,  but  then,  as  its 
name  imports,  for  the  most  part  a  dreary  morass. 
When  the  rains  were  heavy,  and  the  Parret  and  its 
ti-ibutary  streams  rose  above  their  banks,  this  tract  was 
often  flooded.  It  was  indeed  anciently  part  of  that  great 
swamp  which  is  renowned  in  our  early  chronicles  as 
having  arrested  the  progress  of  two  successive  races  of 
invaders,  which  long  protected  the  Celts  against  the 
aggressions  of  the  kings  of  Wessex,  and  which  shel- 
tered Alfred  from  the  pursuit  of  the  Danes.  In  those 
remote  times  this  region  could  be  traversed  only  in 
boats.  It  was  a  vast  pool,  wherein  were  scattered 
many  islets  of  shifting  and  treacherous  soil,  overhung 
with  rank  jungle,  and  swarming  with  deer  and  wild 
swine.  Even  in  the  days  of  the  Tudors,  the  traveller 
whose  journey  lay  from  Ilchester  to  Bridgewater  was 
forced  to  make  a  circuit  of  several  miles  in  order  to 
avoid  the  waters.  When  Monmouth  looked  upon 
Sedgemoor,  it  had  been  partially  reclaimed  by  art, 
and  was  intersected  by  many  deep  and  wide  ti'enches 
which,  in  that  country,  are  called  rliines.  In  the 
midst  of  the  moor  rose,  clustering  round  the  towers 
of  churches,  a  few  vilhiges,  of  wliich  the  names  seem 
to  indicate  that  they  once  were  surrounded  by  waves. 
In  one  of  these  villages,  called  Weston  Zoyland,  the 
royal  cavalry  lay  ;  and  Feversham  had  fixed  his  head 
(juarters  there.  Many  persons  still  living  have  seen 
the  daughter  of  the  servant  girl  who  waited   on  him 


202  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

that  day  at  table  ;  and  a  large  dish  of  Persian  ware, 
which  was  set  before  him,  i^  still  carefully  preserved  in 
the  neighbourhood.  It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  pop- 
ulation of  Somersetshire  does  not,  like  that  of  the  man- 
ufacturing districts,  consist  of  emigrants  from  distant 
places.  It  is  by  no  means  unusual  to  find  farmers  who 
cultivate  the  same  land  which  their  ancestors  cultivated 
when  the  Plantagenets  reigned  in  England.  The  Som- 
ersetshire traditions  are,  therefore,  of  no  small  value  to 
an  historian.^ 

At  a  greater  distance  from  Bridgewater  lies  the  vil- 
lage of  Middlezoy.  In  that  village  and  its  neighbour- 
hood, the  Wiltshire  militia  were  quartered,  under  the 
command  of  Pembroke. 

On  the  open  moor,  not  far  from  Chedzoy,  were  en- 
camped several  battalions  of  regular  infantry.  Mon- 
mouth looked  gloomily  on  them.  He  could  not  but 
remember  how,  a  few  years  before,  he  had,  at  the  head 
of  a  column  composed  of  some  of  those  very  men,  driven 
before  him  in  confusion  the  fierce  enthusiasts  who  de- 
fended Bothwell  Bridge.  He  could  distinguish  among 
the  hostile  ranks  that  gallant  band  which  was  then 
called,  from  the  name  of  its  Colonel,  Dumbarton's  regi- 
ment, but  which  has  long  been  known  as  the  first  of  the 
line,  and  which,  in  all  the  four  quarters  of  the  world, 
has  nobly  supported  its  early  reputation.  "  I  know 
those  men,"  said  Monmouth  ;  "  they  will  fight.  If  I 
had  but  them,  all  would  go  well !  "  ^ 

Yet  the  aspect  of  the  enemy  was  not  altogether  dis- 

1  Matt.  West.  Flor.  Hist.,  a.  d.  788;  MS.  Chronicle  quoted  by  Mr.  Sharon 
Turner  in  the  History  of  the  Anftlo-Saxons,  book  IV.  chap.  xix. ;  Dra)'toirs 
Polyolbion,  iii.;  Leland's  Itinerary;  Oldmixon,  703.  Oldmixon  was  then 
at  Bridgewater,  and  probably  saw  the  Duke  on  the  church  tower.  The  dish 
mentioned  in  the  text  is  the  property  of  Mr.  Stradling,  who  has  taken  laud 
able  pains  to  preserve  the  relics  and  traditions  of  the  Western  insurrection 

2  Oldmixon,  703. 


I 


1«85.1  JAMES    THE   SECOND.  203 

couraging.  The  three  divisions  of  the  royal  army  lay 
far  apart  fi'om  one  another.  There  was  an  a])pearance 
of  negligence  arid  of  relaxed  discipline  in  all  their  move- 
ments. It  was  reported  that  they  were  drinking  them- 
selves drunk  with  the  Zoyland  cider.  The  incapacity 
of  Feversham,  who  commanded  in  chief,  was  notorious. 
Even  at  this  momentous  crisis  he  thought  only  of  eating 
and  sleeping.  Churchill  wns  indeed  a  captain  equal  to 
tasks  far  more  arduous  than  that  of  scattering  a  crowd 
of  ill  armed  and  ill  trained  peasants.  But  the  genius, 
which,  at  a  later  period,  humbled  six  Marshals  of 
France,  was  not  now  in  its  proper  place.  Feversham 
told  Churchill  little,  and  gave  him  no  encouragement 
to  offer  any  suggestion.  The  lieutenant,  conscious  of 
superior  abilities  and  science,  impatient  of  the  control 
of  a  chief  whom  he  despised,  and  trembling  for  tlie  fate 
of  the  army,  nevertheless  preserved  his  characteristic 
selfcommand,  and  dissembled  his  feelings  so  well  that 
Feversham  praised  his  submissive  alacrity,  and  prom- 
ised to  report  it  to  the  King.^ 

Monmouth,  having  observed  the  disposition  of  the 
royal  forces,  and  having  been  apprised  of  the  state  in 
which  they  were,  conceived  that  a  night  attack  might 
be  attended  with  success.  He  resolved  to  run  the  haz- 
ard, and  preparations  were  instantly  made. 

It  was  Sunday  ;  and  his  followers,  who  had,  for  the 
most  part,  been  brought  up  after  the  Puritan  fashion, 
passed  a  great  part  of  the  day  in  religious  exercises. 
The  Castle  Field,  in  which  the  army  was  encamped, 
presented  a  spectacle  such  as,  since  the  disbanding  of 
Cromwell's  soldiers,  England  had  never  seen.  The 
dissenting  preachers  who  had  tiiken  arms  against  Pop- 
ery^ and  some  of  whom  had   probably  fought  in  the 

1  Churchill  to  Clarendon,  July  4.  1685. 


204  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch    V. 

great  civil  war,  prayed  and  preached  in  red  coats  and 
huge  jackboots,  with  swords  by  their  sides.  Ferguson 
was  one  of  those  who  harangued.  He  took  for  his  text 
the  awful  imprecation  by  whicli  the  Israelites  who  dwelt 
beyond  Jordan  cleared  themselves  from  the  charge  igno- 
rantly  brought  against  them  by  their  brethren  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river.  "  The  Lord  God  of  Gods,  the 
Lord  God  of  Gods,  he  knoweth  ;  and  Israel  he  shall 
know.  If  it  be  in  rebellion,  or  if  in  transgression  against 
the  Lord,  save  us  not  this  dav."  ^ 

That  an  attack  was  to  be  made  under  cover  of  the 
night  was  no  secret  in  Bridgewater.  The  town  was 
full  of  women,  who  had  repaired  thither  by  hundreds 
from  the  surrounding  region,  to  see  their  husbands, 
sons,  lovers,  and  brothers  once  more.  There  were 
many  sad  partings  that  day  ;  and  many  parted  never  to 
meet  again  .^  The  report  of  the  intended  attack  came 
to  the  ears  of  a  young  girl  who  was  zealous  for  the 
King.  Though  of  modest  character,  she  had  the  cour- 
age to  resolve  that  she  would  herself  bear  the  intelli- 
gence  to  Feversham.  She  stole  out  of  Bridgewater, 
and  made  her  way  to  the  royal  camp.  But  that  camp 
was  not  a  place  where  female  innocence  could  be  safe. 
Even  the  officers,  despising  alike  the  irregular  force  to 
which  they  were  opposed,  and  the  negligent  general 
who  commanded  them,  had  indulged  largely  in  wine, 
and  were  ready  for  any  excess  of  licentiousness  and 
cruelty.  One  of  them  seized  the  unhappy  maiden,  re- 
fused to  listen  to  her  errand,  and  brutally  outraged  her. 
She  fled  in  agonies  of  rage  and  shame,  leaving  the 
wicked  army  to  its  doom.^ 

1  Oldmixon,  703.;  Observator,  Aug.  1.  1685. 
8  Paschall's  Narrative  in  Hey  wood's  Appendix. 

8  Kennet,  ed.  1719,  iii  4.32.    I  am  forced  to  believe  that  this  lamentable 
Btory  is  true.    The  Bishop  declares  that  it  was  communicated  to  him  in  the 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  205 


And  now  the  time  for  the  gi'eat  hazard  drew  near. 
The  night  was  not  ill  suited  for  such  an  enterprise. 
The  moon  was  indeed  at  the  full,  and  the  northern 
streamers  were  shining  brilliantly.  But  the  mai'sh  fog 
lay  so  thick  on  Sedgemoor  that  no  object  could  be  dis- 
cerned there  at  the  distance  of  fifty  paces.^ 

The  clock  struck  eleven  ;  and  the  Duke  with  his  body 
guard  rode  out  of  the  Castle.  He  was  not  in  ^^^^^^  ^f 
the  frame  of  mind  which  bents  one  who  is  Sedgemoor. 
about  to  sti'ike  a  decisive  blow.  The  very  cliildren 
who  pressed  to  see  him  pass  observed,  and  long  remem- 
bered, that  his  look  was  sad  and  full  of  evil  augury. 
His  army  marched  by  a  circuitous  path,  near  six  miles 
in  length,  towards  the  royal  encampment  on  Sedge- 
moor.  Part  of  the  route  is  to  this  day  called  War 
Lane.  The  foot  were  led  by  Monmouth  himself.  The 
horse  were  confided  to  Grey,  in  spite  of  the  remon- 
strances of  some  who  remembered  the  mishap  at  Brid- 
port.  Orders  were  given  that  strict  silence  should  be 
preserved,  that  no  drum  should  be  beaten,  and  no  shot 
fired.  The  word  by  which  the  insurgents  were  to  rec- 
otrnise  one  another  in  the  darkness  was  Soho.  It  had 
doubtless  been  selected  in  allusion  to  Soho  Fields  in 
London,  where  their  leader's  palace  stood.^ 

year  1718  by  a  brave  officer  of  the  Hliies,  •who  had  fonjrht  at  Sedgemoor,  and 
who  had  hiniselt'seen  the  poor  girl  depart  in  an  agon}-  of  distress. 

1  Narrative  of  an  oflioer  of  the  Horse  Guards  in  Kennet,  ed.  1719,  iii. 
432. ;  M.S.  Journal  of  the  Western  Rebellion,  kept  by  Mr.  Edward  Dummer; 
Dryden's  Hind  and  ranthcr,  part  II.  The  lines  of  Dryden  are  remark- 
able:— 

"  Such  were  the  pleasing  triumphs  of  the  sky 

For  Jainfs's  late  nocturnal  victory, 

The  ple(l(;e  of  liis  jilniighty  patron's  love. 

The  fireworks  which  his  nn(;i'ls  made  above. 

I  Sivw  mysolf  Uu'  Iniiihcnt  easy  li;;ht 

Gild  the  lirciwii  Imnor  ami  disiicl  the  night. 

The  nies.scn.iri'r  with  s|>i*il  the  tidings  bore, 

News  which  three  lalioiiriu;;  nations  did  restore; 

Hut  hcaven'w  own  Nuntius  wa.-!  arrived  befon,'." 

•  It  has  been  said  by  many  writers,  and  among  them  bj-  I'ennant,  that 


206  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch    V. 

At  about  one  in  the  morning  of  Monday  the  sixth  of 
July,  the  rebels  were  on  the  open  moor.  But  between 
them  and  the  enemy  lay  three  broad  rhines  filled  witli 
water  and  soft  mud.  Two  of  these,  called  the  Black 
Ditch  and  the  Langmoor  Rhine,  Monmouth  knew  that 
lie  must  pass.  But,  strange  to  say,  the  existence  of  a 
trench,  called  the  Bussex  Rhine,  which  immediately 
covered  the  royal  encampment,  had  not  been  mentioned 
to  him  by  any  of  his  scouts. 

The  wains  which  carried  the  ammunition  remained 
at  the  entrance  of  the  moor.  The  horse  and  foot,  in  a 
long  narrow  column,  passed  the  Black  Ditch  by  a  cause- 
way. There  was  a  similar  causeway  across  the  Lang- 
moor  Rhine  :  but  the  guide,  in  the  fog,  missed  his  way. 
There  was  some  delay  and  some  tumult  before  the  error 
could  be  rectified.  At  length  the  passage  was  effected : 
but,  in  the  confusion,  a  pistol  went  off.  Some  men  of 
the  Horse  Guards,  who  were  on  watch,  heard  the  report, 
and  perceived  that  a  great  multitude  was  advancing 
through  the  mist.  They  fired  their  carbines,  and  gal- 
loped off  in  different  directions  to  give  the  alarm.  Some 
hastened  to  Weston  Zoyland,  where  the  cavalry  lay. 
One  trooper  spurred  to  the  encampment  of  the  infantiy, 
and  cried  out  vehemently  that  the  enemy  was  at  hand. 
The  drums  of  Dumbarton's  regiment  beat  to  arms  ;  and 
the  men  got  fast  into  their  ranks.  It  was  time  ;  for 
Monmouth  was  already  drawing  up  his  army  for  action. 
He  ordered  Grey  to  lead  the  way  with  the  cavalry, 
and  followed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  infantry.  Grey 
])ushed  on  till  his  progress  was  unexpectedly  arrested 
by  the  Bussex   Rhine.     On   the  opposite   side  of  the 

the  district  in  London  called  Soho  derived  its  name  from  the  watchword  of 
Monmouth's  army  at  Sedgemoor.  Mention  of  Soho  Fields  will  be  found  in 
booits  printed  before  the  Western  insurrection ;  for  example,  in  Chamber- 
layne'a  State  of  England,  tr.S4 


1685.]  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  207 

ditch  the  King's  foot  were"  hastily  forming  in  order  of 
battle. 

"For  whom  are  you?"  called  out  an  officer  of  the 
Foot  Guards.  "  For  the  King,"  replied  a  voice  from 
the  ranks  of  the  rebel  cavalry.  "For  which  King?" 
Avas  then  demanded.  The  answer  was  a  shout  of 
"  King  Monmouth,"  mingled  with  the  war  cry,  which 
forty  years  before  had  been  inscribed  on  the  colours  of 
the  parliamentary  regiments,  "  God  with  us."  The 
royal  troops  instantly  fired  such  a  volley  of  musketry 
as  sent  the  rebel  horse  flying  in  all  directions.  The 
world  agreed  to  ascribe  this  ignominious  rout  to 
Grey's  pusillanimity.  Yet  it  is  by  no  means  clear  that 
Cluu'chill  would  have  succeeded  better  at  the  head  of 
men  who  had  never  before  handled  arms  on  horseback, 
and  whose  horses  were  unused,  not  only  to  stand  fire, 
but  to  obey  the  rein. 

A  few  minutes  after  the  Duke's  horse  had  dispersed 
themselves  over  the  moor,  his  infantry  came  up  run- 
ning fast,  and  guided  through  the  gloom  by  the  lighted 
matches  of  Dumbarton's  ree-iment. 

Monmouth  was  startled  by  finding  that  a  broad  and 
profound  trench  lay  between  him  and  the  camp  which 
ho  had  hoped  to  surprise.  The  insurgents  halted  on 
the  edge  of  the  rhine,  and  fired.  Part  of  the  royal  in- 
fantry on  the  opposite  bank  returned  the  fire.  During 
three  quarters  of  an  hour  the  roar  of  the  musketry  was 
incessant.  The  Somersetshire  peasants  behaved  them- 
selves as  if  they  had  been  veteran  soldiers,  save  only 
that  they  levelled  their  pieces  too  high. 

But  now  the  other  divisions  of  the  royal  army  were 

in  motion.     The  Life  Guards  and  Blues  came  pricking 

fast  from  Weston  Zoyland,  and  scattered  in  an  instant 

some  of  Grey's  horse,  who  had  attempted  to  rally.    The 
VOL.  II.  14 


208  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

ftigitives  spread  a  panic  among  their  comrades  in  the 
rear,  who  had  charge  of  the  ammunition.  The  waggon- 
ers drove  off  at  full  speed,  and  never  stopped  till  they 
were  many  miles  from  the  field  of  battle.  Monmouth 
had  hitherto  done  his  part  like  a  stout  and  able  war- 
rior. He  had  been  seen  on  foot,  pike  in  hand,  en- 
couraging his  infantry  by  voice  and  by  example.  But 
he  was  too  well  acquainted  with  military  affairs  not  to 
know  that  all  was  over.  His  men  had  lost  the  advan- 
tage which  surprise  and  darkness  had  given  them.  They 
were  deserted  by  the  horse  and  by  the  ammunition 
waggons.  The  King's  forces  were  now  united  and  in 
good  order.  Feversham  had  been  awakened  by  the 
firing,  had  got  out  of  bed,  had  adjusted  his  cravat,  had 
looked  at  himself  well  in  the  glass,  and  had  come  to  see 
what  his  men  were  doing.  Meanwhile,  what  was  of 
much  more  importance,  Churchill  had  rapidly  made  an 
entirely  new  disposition  of  the  royal  infantry.  The  day 
was  about  to  break.  The  event  of  a  conflict  on  an 
open  plain,  by  broad  sunlight,  could  not  be  doubtfuh 
Yet  Monmouth  should  have  felt  that  it  was  not  for  him 
to  fly,  while  thousands  whom  affection  for  him  had  hur- 
ried to  destruction  were  still  fighting  manfully  in  his 
cause.  But  vain  hopes  and  the  intense  love  of  life 
prevailed.  He  saw  that  if  he  tarried  the  royal  caA'^alry 
would  soon  intercept  his  retreat.  He  mounted  and 
rode  fi'om  the  field. 

Yet  his  foot,  though  deserted,  made  a  gallant  stand. 
The  Life  Guards  attacked  them  on  the  right,  the  Blues 
on  the  left :  but  the  Somersetshire  clowns,  with  their 
scythes  and  the  but  ends  of  their  muskets,  faced  the 
royal  horse  like  old  soldiers.  Oglethorpe  made  a  vigor- 
ous attempt  to  break  them  and  was  manfully  repulsed. 
Sarsfield,  a  brave  Irish  officer,  whose  name  afterwards 


I 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  209 

obtained  a  melancholy  celebrity,  charged  on  the  other 
flank.  His  men  were  beaten  back.  He  was  himself 
struck  to  the  ground,  and  lay  for  a  time  as  one  dead. 
But  the  struggle  of  the  hardy  rustics  could  not  last. 
Their  powder  and  ball  were  spent.  Cries  were  heard 
of  "  Ammunition  !  for  God's  sake  ammunition  !  "  But 
no  ammunition  was  at  hand.  And  now  the  King's 
artillery  came  up.  It  had  been  posted  half  a  mile  off, 
on  the  high  road  fi'om  Weston  Zoyland  to  Bridgewater. 
So  defective  were  then  the  appointments  of  an  English 
army  that  there  would  have  been  much  difficulty  in 
dragging  the  great  guns  to  the  place  where  the  battle 
was  raging,  had  not  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  offered 
his  coach  horses  and  traces  for  the  purpose.  This  in- 
terference of  a  Christian  prelate  in  a  matter  of  blood 
has,  with  strange  inconsistency,  been  condemned  by 
some  Whio;  writers  who  can  see  nothino;  criminal  in  the 
conduct  of  the  numerous  Puritan  ministers  then  in 
arms  against  the  government.  Even  when  the  guns 
had  arrived,  there  was  such  a  want  of  gunners  that  a 
sergeant  of  Dumbarton's  regiment  was  foi'ced  to  take 
on  himself  the  management  of  several  pieces.^  The 
cannon,  however,  though  ill  served,  brought  the  en- 
gagement to  a  speedy  close.  The  pikes  of  the  rebel 
battalions  began  to  shake ;  the  ranks  broke ;  the  King's 
cavalry  charged  again,  and  bore  down  everything  be- 
fore them  ;  the  King's  infantry  came  pouring  across  the 
ditch.  Even  in  that  extremity  the  Mendip  miners  stood 
bravely  to  their  arms,  and  sold  their  lives  dearly.  But 
the  rout  was  in  a  few  minutes  com])lete.     Three  hun- 

1  There  i?  a  warrant  of -lanics  directing  that  forty  pouii(l>!  should  be  paid 
U>  Sergeant  Weeiiis,  of  i)iniiliartoii"s  rogimeiit,  "for  good  service  in  the 
•ctioii  at  Sedgemoor  in  firing  the  great  guns  against  the  rebels."  —  Hlstor* 
ical  Record  of  the  First  or  Uoyal  Kcgiincnt  of  Foot. 


210  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

dred  of  the  soldiers  had  been  killed  or  wounded.     Of 

the  rebels  more  than  a  thousand  lay  dead  on  the  moor.^ 

So  ended  the  last  fight,  deserving  the  name  of  battle, 

1  James  the  Second's  account  of  the  battle  of  Sedgemoor  in  Lord  Haid- 
wicke's  State  Papers;  Wade's  Confession;  Ferguson's  MS.  Narrative  in 
Eachard,  iii.  768. ;  Narrative  of  an  officer  of  the  Horse  Guards  in  Kennet, 
ed.  1719,  iii.  432.;  London  Gazette,  .July  9. 1685;  Oldinixon,703.;  Pasdia'.l's 
Narrative;  Burnet,  i.  643.;  Evelyn's  Diary,  July  8.;  Citters,  July -V.  ; 
Barillon,  July  -9-.;  Reresby's  Memoirs ;  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's  Huttlu 
of  Sedgemoor,  a  Farce;  MS.  Journal  of  the  Western  Rebellion,  kept  by  Mr. 
Edward  Dummer,  then  .serving  in  the  train  of  artillery  employed  by  His 
Majesty  for  the  suppression  of  the  same.  The  last  mentioned  manuscript  is 
in  the  Pepysian  library,  and  is  of  the  greatest  value,  not  on  account  of  the 
narrative,  which  contains  little  that  is  remarkable,  but  on  account  of  the 
plans,  which  exhibit  the  battle  in  four  or  five  different  stages. 

"  The  history  of  a  battle,"  says  the  greatest  of  living  generals,  "  is  not 
unlike  the  history  of  a  ball.  Some  individuals  may  recollect  all  the  little 
events  of  which  the  great  result  is  the  battle  won  or  lost;  but  no  individual 
can  recollect  the  order  in  which,  or  the  exact  moment  at  which,  they  oc- 
curred, which  makes  all  the  difference  as  to  their  value  or  importance 

Just  to  show  you  how  little  reliance  can  be  placed  even  on  what  are  sup- 
posed the  best  accounts  of  a  battle,  I  mention  that  there  are  some  circum- 
stances mentioned  in  General 's  account  which  did  not  occur  as  he 

relates  them.  It  is  impossible  to  say  when  each  important  occurrence  took 
place,  or  in  what  order."  —Wellington  Papers,  Aug.  8.  and  17.  1815. 

The  battle  concerning  which  the  Duke  of  Wellington  wrote  thus  was  that 
of  Waterloo,  fought  only  a  few  weeks  before,  by  broad  day,  under  his  own 
vigihmt  and  experienced  eye.  What,  then,  must  he  the  difficulty  of  com- 
piling from  twelve  or  thirteen  narratives  an  account  of  a  battle  fought  more 
than  a  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago  in  such  darkness  that  not  a  man  of 
those  engaged  could  see  fifty  paces  before  him  ?  The  difficulty  is  aggravat 
ed  by  the  circumstance  that  those  witnesses  who  had  the  best  opportunity 
of  knowing  the  truth  were  by  no  means  inclined  to  tell  it.  The  paper  which 
I  have  placed  at  the  head  of  my  list  of  authorities  was  evidently  drawn  up 
with  extreme  partiality  to  Feversham.  Wade  was  writing  under  the  dread 
of  the  halter.  Ferguson,  who  was  seldom  scrupulous  about  the  truth  of  his 
assertions,  lied  on  this  occasion  like  Bobadil  or  ParoUes.  Oldmixon,  who 
was  a  boy  at  Bridgewater  when  the  battle  was  fought,  and  passed  a  gieat 
part  of  his  subsequent  life  there,  was  so  much  under  the  influence  of  local 
passions  that  his  local  information  was  useless  to  hira.  His  desire  to  magnily 
the  valour  of  the  Somersetshire  peasants,  a  valour  which  their  enemies  ac- 
knowledged, and  which  did  not  need  to  be  set  off  by  exaggeration  and  fic- 
tion, led  him  to  compose  an  absurd  romance.  The  eulogy  which  Barillon, 
a  Frenchman  accustomed  to  despise  raw  levies,  pronounced  on  the  van- 
quished army,  is  of  much  more  value.  "  Son  infanterie  fit  fort  bien.  On 
eat  de  la  peine  a  les  rompre,  et  les  soldats  combattoient  avec  les  crosse* 


l«W.J  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  211 

that  has  been  fought  on  English  ground.  The  iinpi-cs- 
sion  left  on  the  simple  inhabitants  of  the  neighbourhood 
was  deep  and  lasting.  Tliat  impression,  indeed,  has 
been  frequently  renewed.  For  even  in  our  own  time 
the  plough  and  the  spade  have  not  seldom  turned  up 
ghastly  memorials  of  the  slaughter,  skulls,  and  thigh- 
bones, and  strange  weapons  made  out  of  implements  of 
husbandly.  Old  peasants  related  very  recently  that, 
in  their  childhood,  they  were  accustomed  to  play  on 
the  moor  at  the  fight  between  King  James's  men  and 
King  Monmouth's  men,  and  that  King  Monmouth's 
men  always  raised  the  cry  of  Soho.^ 

What  seems  most  extraordinary  in  the  battle  of 
Sedgemoor  is  that  the  event  should  have  been  for  a 
moment  doubtful,  and  that  the  rebels  should  have  re- 
sisted so  long.  That  five  or  six  thousand  colliers  and 
ploughmen  should  contend  during  an  hour  with  half 
that  number  of  regular  cavah-y  and  infantry  would  now 
be  thought  a  miracle.  Our  wonder  will,  perhaps,  be 
diminished  when  we  remember  that,  in  the  time  of 
James  the  Second,  the  discipline  of  the  regular  army 
was  extremely  lax,  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
peasantry  were  accustomed  to  serve  in  the  militia. 
The  difference,  therefore,  between  a  regiment  of  the 
foot  guards  and  a  regiment  of  clowns  just  enrolled, 
though  doubtless  considerable,  was  by  no  means  what 
it  now  is.     Monmouth   did   not  lead  a  mere  mob  to 

ill'  tiiousquet  et  les  scies  qii'ils  avoient  au  bout  de  grands  bastons  au  lieu  do 
|)iiques." 

Little  is  now  to  be  learned  by  visiting  the  field  of  battle;  for  the  face  of 
the  country  has  been  greatly  (luuiged;  and  the  old  Busscx  Hliine,  on  the 
banks  of  which  the  great  struggle  took  place,  has  long  disappeared.  The 
Uhine  now  called  by  that  name  is  of  later  date,  and  takes  a  dillcrent  course. 

1  have  derived  much  assistance  from  Mr.  Roberts's  account  of  the  lialllc. 
Life  of  MonniDUth,  chap.  xxii.  His  narrative  is  in  the  main  conlirmed  by 
Uunimer's  i)lans. 

'  I  learned  these  things  from  persons  living  close  to  Sedgemoor. 


212  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V, 

attack  good  soldiers.  For  his  followers  were  not  alto- 
gether  without  a  tincture  of  soldiership  ;  and  Fever- 
sham's  troops,  when  compared  with  English  troops  of 
our  time,  might  almost  be  called  a  mob. 

It  was  four  o'clock :  the  sun  was  rising ;  and  the 
routed  army  came  pouring  into  the  streets  of  Bridge- 
water.  The  uproar,  the  blood,  the  gashes,  the  ghastly- 
figures  which  sank  down  and  never  rose  again,  spread 
horror  and  dismay  through  the  town.  The  pursuers, 
too,  were  close  behind.  Those  inhabitants  who  had 
favoured  the  insiu'rection  expected  sack  and  massacre, 
and  implored  the  protection  of  their  neighbours  who 
professed  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,  or  had  made 
themselves  conspicuous  by  Tory  politics  ;  and  it  is  ac- 
knowledged by  the  bitterest  of  Whig  historians  that 
this  protection  was  kindly  and  generously  given. ^ 

During  that  day  the  conquerors  continued  to  chase 
Pursuit  of  the  fugitives.  The  neighbouring  villagers 
the  rebels,  j^^^  remembered  with  what  a  clatter  of 
horsehoofs  and  what  a  storm  of  curses  the  whirlwind 
of  cavalry  swept  by.  Before  evening  five  hundred 
prisoners  had  been  crowded  into  the  parish  church  of 
Weston  Zoyland.  Eighty  of  them  were  wounded  ; 
and  five  expired  within  the  consecrated  walls.  Great 
numbers  of  labourers  were  impressed  for  the  purpose 
of  burying  the  slain.  A  few,  who  were  notoriously 
partial  to  the  vanquished  side,  were  set  apart  for  the 
hideous  office  of  quartering  the  captives.  The  tithing 
men  of  the  neighbouring  parishes  were  busied  in  set- 
ting up  gibbets  and  providing  chains.  All  this  while 
the  bells  of  Western  Zoyland  and  Chedzoy  rang  joy- 
ously, and  the  soldiers  sang  and  rioted  on  the  moor 
amidst  the  corpses.     For  the  farmers  of  the  neighbour- 

1  Oldmixon,  704. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  218 

hood  had  made  haste,  as  soon  as  the  event  of  tlie  fight 
was  known,  to  send  hogsheads  of  their  best  cider  as 
peace  offerings  to  the  victors. '^ 

Feversham  passed  for  a  goodnatured  man  :  but  he 
was  a  foreigner,  ignorant  of  the  laws  and  Military 
careless  of  the  feelings  of  the  English.  He  «^«'"i«°°«- 
was  accustomed  to  the  military  license  of  France,  and 
had  learned  from  his  great  kinsman,  the  conqueror  and 
devastator  of  the  Palatinate,  not  indeed  how  to  conquer, 
but  how  to  devastate.  A  considerable  number  of  pris- 
oners were  immediately  selected  for  execution.  Among 
them  was  a  youth  famous  for  his  speed.  Hopes  Avere 
held  out  to  hitn  that  his  life  would  be  spared  if  he  could 
run  a  race  with  one  of  the  colts-  of  the  marsh.  The 
space  through  which  the  man  kept  up  with  the  horse  is 
still  marked  by  well  known  bounds  on  the  moor,  and  is 
about  three  quarters  of  a  mile.  Feversham  was  not 
ashamed,  after  seeing  the  performance,  to  send  the 
wretched  performer  to  the  gallows.  The  next  day  a 
long  line  of  gibbets  appeared  on  the  road  leading  from 
Bridgewater  to  Weston  Zoyland.  On  each  gibbet  a 
prisoner  was  suspended.  Four  of  the  sufferers  were 
left  to  rot  in  irons.^ 

Meanwhile  Momnouth,  accompanied  by  Grey,  by 
Buyse,  and  by  a  few  other  friends,  was  fly-  FiiRUtof 
ing  from  the  field  of  battle.  At  Chedzoy  he  M"°°>o"'h. 
stojiped  a  moment  to  mount  a  fresh  horse  and  to  hide 
his  blue  riband  and  his  George.  He  then  hastened 
towards  the  Bristol  Channel.  From  the  risino;  ground 
on  tlie  north  of  the  field  of  battle  he  saw  tlie  flash  and 
the  smoke  of  the  last  volley  fired  by  liis  deserted  fol- 
lowers.    Before  six  o'clock  he  was  twenty  miles  from 

1  Locke's  Western  Rebellion;  Stradling's  Chilton  I'riory. 

'  Locke's   Western   Kubtllion;    Stradling's  Chilton   Priorj'  ;  Oldmixon, 

ro4. 


214  HISTOBY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

Sedgemoor.  Some  of  his  companions  advised  him  to 
cross  the  water,  and  to  seek  refuge  in  Wales  ;  and  this 
would  undoubtedly  have  been  his  wisest  course.  He 
would  have  been  in  Wales  many  hours  before  the  news 
of  his  defeat  was  known  there ;  and,  in  a  country  so  wild 
and  so  remote  from  the  seat  of  government,  he  might 
have  remained  long  undiscovered.  He  determined^ 
however,  to  push  for  Hampshire,  in  the  hope  that  he 
might  lurk  in  the  cabins  of  deer  stealers  among  the 
oaks  of  the  New  Forest,  till  means  of  conveyance  to 
the  Continent  could  be  procured.  He  therefore,  with 
Grey  and  the  German,  turned  to  the  south  east.  But 
the  way  was  beset  with  dangers.  The  three  fugitives 
had  to  traverse  a  country  in  which  every  one  already 
knew  the  event  of  the  battle,  and  in  which  no  traveller 
of  suspicious  appearance  could  escape  a  close  scrutiny. 
They  rode  on  all  day,  shunning  towns  and  villages. 
Nor  was  this  so  difficult  as  it  may  now  appear.  For 
men  then  living  could  remember  the  time  when  the 
wild  deer  ranged  freely  through  a  succession  of  forests 
from  the  banks  of  the  Avon  in  Wiltshire  to  the  south- 
ern coast  of  Hampshire.^  At  length,  on  Cranbourne 
Chase,  the  strength  of  the  horses  failed.  They  were 
therefore  turned  loose.  The  bridles  and  saddles  were 
concealed.  Monmouth  and  his  friends  procured  rustic 
attire,  disguised  themselves,  and  proceeded  on  foot  to- 
wards the  New  Forest.  They  passed  the  night  in  the 
open  air :  but  before  morning  they  were  surrounded 
on  every  side  by  toils.  Lord  Lumley,  who  lay  at 
Ringwood  with  a  strong  body  of  the  Sussex  militia, 
had  sent  forth  parties  in  every  direction.  Sir  William 
Portman,  with  the  Somerset  militia,  had  formed  a  chain 
of  posts  from  the  sea  to  the  northern  extremity  of  Dor- 
1  Aubrey's  Natural  History  ofWiltshire,  1691. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  216 

set.  At  five  in  the  morning  of  the  seventh,  Grey,  who 
had  wandered  from  his  friends,  was  seized  by  two  of 
the  Sussex  scouts.  He  submitted  to  his  fate  with  the 
calmness  of  one  to  wliom  suspense  was  more  intoler- 
able than  despair.  "  Since  we  landed,"  he  said,  "  I 
have  not  had  one  comfortable  meal  or  one  quiet  night." 
It  could  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  chief  rebel  was  not 
far  off.  The  pursuers  redoubled  their  vigilance  and 
activity.  The  cottages  scattered  over  the  heathy  coun- 
try on  the  boundaries  of  Dorsetshire  and  Hampshire 
were  strictly  examined  by  Lumley  ;  and  the  clown  with 
whom  Monmouth  had  chano-ed  clothes  Avas  discovered. 
Portman  came  with  a  strong  body  of  horse  and  foot  to 
assist  in  the  search.  Attention  was  soon  drawn  to  a 
place  well  fitted  to  shelter  fugitives.  It  was  an  exten- 
sive tract  of  land  separated  by  an  inclosure  from  the 
open  country,  and  divided  by  numerous  hedges  into 
small  fields.  In  some  of  these  fields  the  rye,  the  pease, 
and  the  oats  were  high  enough  to  conceal  a  man. 
Others  were  overgrown  with  fern  and  brambles.  A 
poor  woman  reported  that  she  had  seen  two  strangers 
lurking  in  this  covert.  The  near  prospect  of  reward 
animated  the  zeal  of  the  troops.  It  was  agreed  that 
every  man  who  did  his  duty  in  the  search  should  have 
a  share  of  the  promised  five  thousand  pounds.  The 
outer  fence  was  strictly  guarded  :  the  space  within  was 
examined  with  indefatigable  diligence  ;  and  several 
dogs  of  quick  scent  were  turned  out  among  the  bushes. 
The  day  closed  before  the  work  could  be  completed  : 
but  careful  watch  was  kept  all  night.  Thirty  times 
the  fugitives  ventured  to  look  through  the  outer  hedge : 
but  everywhere  they  found  a  sentinel  on  the  alert  : 
once  they  were  seen  and  fired  at ;  they  then  separated 
and  concealed  themselves  in  different  hiding  places. 


216  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

At  sunrise  the  next  morning  the  search  recom- 
menced, and  Buyse  was  found.  He  owned 
that  he  had  parted  from  the  Duke  only  a  few 
hours  before.  The  corn  and  copsewood  were  now 
beaten  with  more  care  than  ever.  At  lenirth  a  o:aunt 
figure  was  discovered  hidden  in  a  ditch.  The  pursuers 
sprang  on  their  prey.  Some  of  them  were  about  to 
fire  :  but  Portman  forbade  all  violence.  The  prisoner's 
dress  was  that  of  a  shepherd  ;  his  beard,  prematurely 
grey,  was  of  several  days'  growth.  He  trembled  greatly, 
and  was  unable  to  speak.  Even  those  who  had  often 
seen  him  were  at  first  in  doubt  whether  this  were  truly 
the  brilliant  and  graceful  Monmouth.  His  pockets 
were  searched  by  Portman,  and  in  them  were  found, 
among  some  raw  pease  gathered  in  the  rage  of  hunger, 
a  watch,  a  pui'se  of  gold,  a  small  treatise  on  fortifica- 
tion, an  album  filled  with  songs,  receipts,  prayers,  and 
charms,  and  the  George  with  which,  many  years  before, 
King  Charles  the  Second  had  decorated  his  favourite 
son.  Messengers  were  instantly  despatched  to  White- 
hall with  the  ffood  news,  and  with  the  George  as  a 
token  that  the  news  was  true.  The  yrisoner  was  con- 
veyed under  a  strong  guard  to  Ringwood.^ 

And  all  was  lost ;  and  nothing  remained  but  that  he 
should  prepare  to  meet  death  as  became  one  who  had 
thought  himself  not  unworthy  to  wear  the  crown  of 
William  the  Conqueror  and  of  Richard  the  Lion- 
hearted,  of  the  hero  of  Cressy  and  of  the  hero  of  A  gin- 
court.  The  captive  might  easily  have  called  to  mind 
other  domestic  examples,  still  better  suited  to  his  con- 


1  Account  of  the  manner  of  taking  the  late  Duke  of  Monmouth,  pub- 
lished by  His  Majesty's  command.  Gazette  de  France,  July  '  1.  1685; 
Eachanl,  iii.  770.;  Burnet,  i.  (544.,  and  Dartmouth's  note;  Van  Citters,  July 
^.  1685. 


II 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  217 

dition.  Within  a  hundred  years,  two  sovereigns  whose 
blood  ran  in  his  veins,  one  of  them  a  dehcate  woman, 
had  been  placed  in  the  same  situation  in  which  he  now 
stood.  They  had  shown,  in  the  prison  and  on  the  scaf- 
fold, virtue  of  which,  in  the  season  of  prosperity,  they 
had  seemed  incapable,  and  had  half  redeemed  great 
crimes  and  errors  by  enduring  with  Christian  meek- 
ness and  princely  dignity  all  that  victorious  enemies 
could  inflict.  Of  cowardice  Monmouth  had  never  been 
accused  ;  and,  even  had  he  been  Avanting  in  constitu- 
tional courage,  it  might  have  been  expected  that  the 
defect  would  be  supplied  by  pride  and  by  despair.  The 
eyes  of  the  whole  world  were  upon  him.  The  latest 
generations  Avould  know  how,  in  that  extremity,  he  had 
borne  himself.  To  the  brave  peasants  of  the  West  he 
owed  it  to  show  that  they  had  not  poured  forth  their 
blood  for  a  leader  unworthy  of  their  attachment.  To 
her  who  had  sacrificed  everything  for  his  sake  he  owed 
it  so  to  bear  himself  that,  though  she  might  weep  for 
him,  she  should  not  blush  for  him.  It  Avas  not  for 
him  to  lament  and  su])plicate.  His  reason,  too,  should 
have  told  him  that  lamentation  and  supplication  would 
be  unavailing.  He  had  done  that  Avhich  could  never 
be  forgiven.  He  was  in  the  grasp  of  one  who  never 
forgave. 

But  the  fortitude  of  Monmouth  was  not  that  highest 
sort  of  fortitude  which  is  derived  from  reflection  and 
from  selfrespect ;  nor  had  nature  given  him  one  of  those 
stout  hearts  from  which  neither  adversity  nor  peril  can 
extort  any  sign  of  weakness.  His  couran-e  rose  and 
fell  with  his  animal  spirits.  It  Avas  sustained  on  the 
field  of  battle  by  the  excitement  of  action,  by  the  hope 
of  victoi-y,  by  the  strange  influence  of  synij^athy.  All 
such  aids  Avere  noAV  taken  aAvay.     The  spoiled  darling 


218  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V, 

of  the  court  and  of  the  populace,  accustomed  to  be 
loved  and  worshipped  wherever  he  appeared,  was  now 
surrounded  by  stern  gaolers  in  whose  eyes  he  read  his 
doom.  Yet  a  few  hours  of  gloomy  seclusion,  and  he 
must  die  a  violent  and  shameful  death.  His  heart  sank 
within  him.  Life  seemed  to  be  worth  purchasing  by 
any  humiliation  ;  nor  could  his  mind,  always  feeble, 
and  now  distracted  by  terror,  perceive  that  humiliation 
must  degrade,  but  could  not  save  him. 

As  soon  as  he  reached  Rino-wood  he  wrote  to  the 
His  letter  to  King.  The  letter  was  that  of  a  man  whom 
the  King.  ^  craven  fear  had  made  insensible  to  shame. 
He  professed  in  vehement  terms  his  remorse  for  his 
treason.  He  affirmed  that,  when  he  promised  his 
cousins  at  the  Hague  not  to  raise  troubles  in  England, 
he  had  fiilly  meant  to  keep  his  word.  Unhappily  he 
had  afterwards  been  seduced  from  his  allegiance  by 
some  horrid  people  who  had  heated  his  mind  by  calum- 
nies and  misled  him  by  sophistry :  but  now  he  abhorred 
them :  he  abhorred  himself.  He  begged  in  piteous 
terms  that  he  might  be  admitted  to  the  royal  presence. 
There  was  a  secret  which  he  could  not  trust  to  paper, 
a  secret  which  lay  in  a  single  word,  and  which,  if  he 
spoke  that  word,  would  secure  the  throne  against  all 
danger.  On  the  following  day  he  despatched  letters, 
imploring  the  Queen  Dowager  and  the  Lord  Treasurer 
to  intercede  in  his  behalf.^ 

When  it  is  was  known  in  London  how  he  had  abased 
himself  the  general  surprise  was  great ;  and  no  man 
was  more  amazed  than  Barillon,  who  had  resided  in 
England  during  two  bloody  proscriptions,  and  had  seen 

1  The  letter  to  the  Khig  was  printed  at  the  time  bv  authority ;  that  to 
the  Queen  Dowager  will  be  found  in  Sir  H.  Ellis's  Original  Letters;  that  to 
Rochester  in  the  Clarendon  Correspondence. 


1685.J  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  219 

numerous  victims,  both  of  the  Opposition  and  of  the 
Court,  submit  to  their  fate  without  womanish  entreaties 
and  lamentations. 1 

Monmouth  and  Grey  remained  at  Ringwood  two 
days.  They  were  then  carried  up  to  London,  He  is  carried 
under  the  guard  of  a  large  body  of  regular  *°  London, 
troops  and  militia.  In  the  coach  with  the  Duke  was 
an  officer  whose  orders  were  to  stab  the  prisoner  if 
a  rescue  were  attempted.  At  every  town  along  the 
road  the  trainbands  of  the  neighbourhood  had  been 
mustered  under  the  command  of  the  principal  gentry. 
The  march  lasted  three  days,  and  terminated  at  Vaux- 
hall,  where  a  regiment,  commanded  by  George  Legge, 
Lord  Dartmouth,  was  in  readiness  to  receive  the  pris- 
onei's.  They  Avere  put  on  board  of  a  state  barge,  and 
carried  down  the  river  to  Whitehall  Stairs.  Lumley 
and  Portman  had  alternately  watched  the  Duke  day 
and  night  till  they  had  brought  him  within  the  walls 
of  the  palace.^ 

Both  the  demeanour  of  Monmouth  and  that  of  Grey, 
during  the  journey,  filled  all  observers  with  surprise. 
Monmouth  was  altogether  unnerved.  Grey  was  not 
only  calm  but  cheerful,  talked  pleasantly  of  horses, 
dogs,  and  field  sports,  and  even  made  jocose  allusions 
to  the  perilous  situation  in  which  lie  stood. 

The  King  cannot  be  blamed  for  determining  that 
Monmouth  should  suffer  death.  Everyman  who  heads 
a  rebellion  against  an  established  government  stakes 
his  hfe  on  the  event:  and  rebellion  was  the  smallest 
part  of  Monmouth's  crime.     He  had  declared  ao-ainst 

1  "  On  trouve,"  he  wrote,  "  fort  ii  rcdire  icy  qu'il  ayt  fait  unc  chose  si 
pen  oidinaiie  atix  Aiifi;lois."    July  U..  Ifi85. 

2  Account  of  the  manner  of  takiii;;  the  Duke  of  Monmouth;  Gazette,  July 
16.1685;    Van  Cittors,  July  ^^. 


220  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cii    V. 

his  uncle  a  war  without  quarter.  In  the  manifesto 
put  forth  at  Lyme,  James  had  been  held  up  to  execra- 
tion as  an  incendiary,  as  an  assassin  who  had  strangled 
one  innocent  man  and  cut  the  throat  of  another,  and, 
lastly,  as  the  poisoner  of  his  own  brother.  To  spare 
an  enemy  wdio  had  not  scrupled  to  resort  to  such  ex- 
tremities- would  have  been  an  act  of  rare,  perhaps  of 
blamable  generosity.  But  to  see  him  and  not  to  spare 
him  was  an  outrage  on  humanity  and  decency.^  This 
outrage  the  King  resolved  to  commit.  The  arms  of 
the  prisoner  were  bound  behind  him  with  a  silken 
cord ;  and,  thus  secured,  he  was  ushered  into  the 
presence  of  the  implacable  kinsman  whom  he  had 
wronged. 

Then  Monmouth  threw  himself  on  the  ground,  and 
His  inter-  crawlcd  to  the  King's  feet.  He  wept.  He 
the  King.  tried  to  embrace  his  uncle's  knees  with  his 
pinioned  arms.  He  begged  for  life,  only  life,  life  at 
any  price.  He  owned  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  a 
great  crime,  but  tried  to  throw  the  blame  on  others, 
particularly  on  Argyle,  who  Avould  rather  have  put 
his  legs  into  the  boots  than  have  saved  his  own  life 
by  such  baseness.  By  the  ties  of  kindred,  by  the 
memory  of  the  late  King,  who  had  been  the  best  and 
truest  of  brothers,  the  unhappy  man  adjured  James 
to  show  some  mercy.  James  gravely  replied  that  this 
repentance  was  of  the  latest,  that  he  was  sorry  for  the 
misery  which  the  prisoner  had  brought  on  himself, 
but  that  the  case  was  not  one  for  lenity.  A  Decla- 
ration, filled  with  atrocious  calumnies,  had  been  put 
forth.    The  regal  title  had  been  assumed.    For  treasons 

J  Barillon  was  evidently  much  shocked.  "  II  se  vient,"  he  says,  "  de 
passer  icy  une  chose  bien  extraordinaire  et  fort  opposes  a  I'usage  ordinaire 
des  autres  nations."    July  ^|^.  1085. 


1«85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  221 

BO  aggravated  there  could  be  no  pardon  on  this  side  of 
the  grave.  The  poor  terrified  Duke  vowed  that  he 
had  never  wished  to  take  the  crown,  but  had  been 
led  into  that  fatal  error  by  others.  As  to  the  Declara- 
tion, he  had  not  written  it :  he  had  not  read  it :  he 
had  signed  it  without  looking  at  it :  it  was  all  the 
work  of  Ferguson,  that  bloody  villain  Ferguson.  "  Do 
you  expect  me  to  believe,"  said  James,  Avith  contempt 
but  too  well  merited,  "  that  you  set  your  hand  to  a 
paper  of  such  moment  without  knowing  what  it  con- 
tained ?  "  One  depth  of  infamy  only  remained ;  and 
even  to  that  the  prisoner  descended.  He  was  preemi- 
nently the  champion  of  the  Protestant  religion.  The 
interest  of  that  religion  had  been  his  plea  for  con- 
spiring against  the  government  of  his  father,  and  for 
bringing  on  his  country  the  miseries  of  civil  war :  yet 
he  was  not  ashamed  to  hint  that  he  was  inclined  to  be 
reconciled  to  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  King  eagerly 
offered  him  spiritual  assistance,  but  said  nothing  of  par- 
don or  respite.  "  Is  there  then  no  hope  ?  "  asked  Mon- 
mouth. James  turned  away  in  silence.  Then  Mon- 
mouth strove  to  rally  his  courage,  rose  from  his  knees, 
and  retired  with  a  firmness  which  he  had  not  shown 
since  his  overthrow. ^ 

Grey  was  introduced  next.  He  behaved  with  a 
propriety  and  fortitude  which  moved  even  the  stern 
and  resentful  King,  frankly  owned  himself  guilty,  made 
no  excuses,  and  did  not  once  stoop  to  ask  his  life. 
Both  the  prisoners  were  sent  to  the  Tower  by  water. 
There  was  no  tumult ;  but  many  thousands  of  people, 
with  anxiety  and  sorrow  in  their  faces,  tried  to  catcli  a 

1  Burnet,  i.  644.;  Evelyn's  Diary,  July  15. ;  Sir  .1.  Braniston's  Memoirs; 
Rereshy's  Memoirs ;  Jame.s  to  the  I'rince  of  Orange,  .Inly  14. 1G35 ;  BaiiUon. 
i<uly  ^0   ;  Buccleudi  JIS. 


222  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

glimpse  of  the  captives.  The  Duke's  resolution  failed 
as  soon  as  he  had  left  the  royal  presence.  On  his 
way  to  his  prison  he  bemoaned  himself,  accused  his 
followers,  and  abjectly  implored  the  intercession  of 
Dartmouth.  "  1  know,  my  Lord,  that  you  loved  my 
father.  For  his  sake,  for  God's  sake,  try  if  there  be 
any  room  for  mercy."  Dartmouth  replied  that  the 
King  had  spoken  the  truth,  and  that  a  subject  who 
assumed  the  regal  title  excluded  himself  from  all  hope 
of  pardon.^ 

Soon  after  Monmouth  had  been  lodged  in  the  Tower, 
he  was  informed  that  his  wife  had,  by  the  royal  com- 
mand, been  sent  to  see  him.  She  was  accompanied  by 
the  Earl  of  Clarendon,  Keeper  of  the  Privy  Seal.  Her 
husband  received  her  very  coldly,  and  addressed  almost 
all  his  discourse  to  Clarendon,  whose  intercession  he 
earnestly  implored.  Clarendon  held  out  no  hopes  ; 
and  that  same  evening  two  prelates.  Turner,  Bishop 
of  Ely,  and  Ken,  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  arrived 
at  the  Tower  with  a  solemn  message  from  the  King. 
It  was  Monday  night.  On  Wednesday  morning  Mon- 
mouth was  to  die. 

He  was  greatly  agitated.  The  blood  left  his  cheeks ; 
and  it  was  some  time  before  he  could  speak.  Most  of 
the  short  time  which  remained  to  him  he  wasted  in 
vain  attempts  to  obtain,  if  not  a  pardon,  at  least  a 
respite.  He  wrote  piteous  letters  to  the  King  and  to 
several  courtiers,  but  in  vain.  Some  Roman  Catholic 
divines  were  sent  to  him  from  court.  But  they  soon 
discovered  that,  though  he  would  gladly  have  purchased 
his  life  by  renouncing  the  religion  of  Avhich  lie  had 
professed  himself  in  an  especial  manner  the  defender, 

1  James  to  the  Prince  of  Orange,  July  14.  1685 ;  Dutch  despatch  of  the 
same  date;  Luttrell's  Diary;  Dartmouth's  note  on  Burnet,  i.  646. 


less.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  223 

yet,  if  he  was  to  die,  he  would  as  soon  die  without 
their  absokition  as  with  it.^ 

Nor  were  Ken  and  Turner  much  better  pleased  with 
his  frame  of  mind.  The  doctrine  of  nonresistance  was, 
in  their  view,  as  in  the  view  of  most  of  their  brethren, 
the  distinguishing  badge  of  the  Anghcan  Church.  The 
two  Bishops  insisted  on  Monmouth's  owning  that,  in 
drawing  the  SAvord  against  the  government,  he  had 
committed  a  great  sin  ;  and,  on  this  ])oint,  they  found 
him  obstinately  heterodox.  Nor  was  this  his  only 
heresy.  He  maintained  that  his  connection  with  Lady 
Wentworth  was  blameless  in  the  sight  of  God.  He 
had  been  married,  he  said,  when  a  child.  He  had 
never  cared  for  his  duchess.  The  happiness  which  he 
had  not  found  at  home  he  had  sought  in  a  round  of 
loose  amours,  condemned  by  religion  and  morality. 
Henrietta  had  reclaimed  him  from  a  life  of  vice.  To 
her  he  had  been  strictly  constant.  They  had,  by  com- 
mon consent,  offered  up  fervent  prayers  for  the  divine 
guidance.  After  those  prayers  they  had  found  their 
affection  for  each  other  strengthened  ;  and  they  could 
then  no  longer  doubt  that,  in  the  sight  of  God,  they 
were  a  wedded  pair.  The  Bishops  were  so  much 
scandalized  by  this  view  of  the  conjugal  relation  that 
they  refused  to  administer  the  sacrament  to  the  pris- 
oner. All  that  they  could  obtain  from  him  was  a 
promise  that,  during  the  single  night  which  still  re- 
mained to  him,  he  would  pray  to  be  enlightened  if  he 
were  in  error. 

On  the  Wednesday  morning,  at  his  jiarticular  re- 
quest. Doctor  Thomas  Tenison,  who  then  held  the  vic- 
arage of  St.  Martin's,  and,  in  that  important  cure,  had 

1  Buccleuch  MS.;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  37.;  Orig.  Mem.; 
Van  Citters,  July  .^^.  1680;  Gazette  de  France,  Aug.    i  , 

VOL.  11.  15 


224  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  ?. 

obtained  the  higli  esteem  of  the  public,  came  to  the 
Tower.  From  Tenisoii,  wliose  opinions  were  known 
to  be  moderate,  the  Duke  expected  more  indulgence 
than  Ken  and  Turner  were  disposed  to  show.  But 
Tenison,  whatever  might  be  his  sentiments  concerning 
nonresistance  in  the  abstract,  thought  the  late  rebelhon 
rash  and  wicked,  and  considered  Monmouth's  notion 
respecting  marriage  as  a  most  dangerous  delusion. 
Monmouth  was  obstinate.  He  had  prayed,  he  said, 
for  the  divine  direction.  His  sentiments  remained  un- 
changed ;  and  he  could  not  doubt  that  they  were  cor- 
rect. Tenison's  exhortations  were  in  a  milder  tone 
than  those  of  the  Bishops.  But  he,  like  them,  thought 
that  he  should  not  be  justified  in  administering  the 
Eucharist  to  one  whose  penitence  was  of  so  unsatis- 
factory a  nature.! 

The  hour  drew  near :  all  hope  Avas  over  ;  and  Mon- 
mouth had  passed  from  pusillanimous  fear  to  the  apathy 
of  despair.  His  children  were  brought  to  his  room 
that  he  might  take  leave  of  them,  and  were  followed 
by  his  wife.  He  spoke  to  her  kindly,  but  without  emo- 
tion. Though  she  was  a  woman  of  great  strength  of 
mind,  and  had  little  cause  to  love  him,  her  miseiy  was 
such  that  none  of  the  bystanders  could  refrain  from 
weeping.     He  alone  was  unmoved.^ 

It  was  ten  o'clock.  The  coach  of  the  Lieutenant  of 
His  exe-  ^^^^  Towcr  was  ready.  Monmouth  requested 
cution.  j^jg  spii'itual  advisers  to  accompany  him  to  the 

place  of  execution ;  and  they  consented  :  but  they  told 
him  that,  in  their  judgment,  he  was  about  to  die  in  a 
perilous  state  of  mind,  and  that,  if  they  attended  him, 

1  Buccleuch  MS.;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  37,38.;  Grig 
Mem.;  Burnet,  i.  645.;  Tenison's  account  in  Kennet,  iii.  432.     Ed.  3719- 
3  Buceleuch  MS. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  226 

it  would  be  their  duty  to  exhort  hiui  to  the  last.  As 
he  passed  along  the  ranks  of  the  guards  he  saluted 
tliem  with  a  smile,  and  mounted  the  scaffold  with  a 
firm  tread.  Tower  Hill  was  covered  up  to  the  chim- 
ney tops  with  an  innumerable  multitude  of  gazers,  who, 
in  awful  silence,  broken  oidy  by  sighs  and  the  noise 
of  weeping,  listened  for  the  last  accents  of  the  dar- 
ling of  the  people.  "  I  shall  say  little,''  he  began.  "  I 
come  here,  not  to  speak,  but  to  die.  I  die  a  Protes- 
tant of  the  Church  of  England."  The  Bishops  inter- 
rupted him,  and  told  him  that,  unless  he  acknowledged 
resistance  to  be  sinful,  he  was  no  member  of  their 
church.  He  went  on  to  speak  of  his  Henrietta.  She 
was,  he  said,  a  young  lady  of  virtue  and  honour.  He 
loved  her  to  the  last,  and  he  could  not  die  without 
giving  utterance  to  his  feelings.  The  Bishops  again 
interfered  and  beooed  him  not  to  use  such  laneuajie. 
Some  altercation  followed.  The  divines  have  been 
accused  of  dealing  harshly  with  the  dying  man.  But 
they  appear  to  have  only  discharged  what,  in  their 
view,  was  a  sacred  duty.  Monmouth  knew  their  prin- 
ciples, and,  if  he  wished  to  avoid  their  importunity, 
should  have  dispensed  with  their  attendance.  Their 
general  arguments  against  resistance  had  no  effect  on 
him.  But  when  they  reminded  him  of  the  ruin  which 
he  had  brought  on  his  brave  and  loving  followers,  of 
the  blood  which  had  been  shed,  of  the  souls  whicii 
had  been  sent  unprepared  to  the  great  account,  he 
was  touched,  and  said,  in  a  softened  voice,  "  I  do  own 
that.  I  am  sorry  that  it  ever  happened."  They  prayed 
with  him  long  and  fei-vently  ;  and  he  joined  in  their 
petitions  till  they  invoked  a  blessing  on  the  King.  He 
remained  silent.  "  Sir,"  said  one  of  the  Bishops, 
"do  you  not  pray  for  the  Kin<i;  with  us?"    JVIoiunouth 


226  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

paused  some  time,  and,  after  an  internal  struggle,  ex- 
claimed "  Amen."  But  it  was  in  vain  that  the  prelates 
implored  him  to  address  to  the  soldiers  and  to  the 
people  a  few  words  on  the  duty  of  obedience  to  the 
government.  "I  will  make  no  speeches,"  he  exclaimed. 
"  Only  ten  words,  my  Lord."  He  turned  away,  called 
his  servant,  and  put  into  the  man's  hand  a  toothpick 
case,  the  last  token  of  ill  starred  love.  "  Give  it,"  he 
said,  "  to  that  person."  He  then  accosted  John  Ketch 
the  executioner,  a  wretch  who  had  butchered  many 
brave  and  noble  victims,  and  whose  name  has,  during 
a  century  and  a  half,  been  vulgarly  given  to  all  who 
have  succeeded  him  in  his  odious  office.^  "  Here,"  sai(? 
the  Duke,  "  are  six  guineas  for  you.  Do  not  hack  me 
as  you  did  my  Lord  Russell.  I  have  heard  that  you 
stnick  him  three  or  four  times.  My  servant  will  give 
you  some  more  gold  if  you  do  the  work  well."  He 
then  undressed,  felt  the  edge  of  the  axe,  expressed  some 
fear  that  it  was  not  sharp  enough,  and  laid  his  head  on 
the  block.  The  divines  in  the  meantime  continued  to 
ejaculate  with  great  energy;  "God accept  your  repent- 
ance ;  God  accept  your  imperfect  repentance." 

The  hano;man  addressed  himself  to  his  office.  But 
he  had  been  disconcerted  by  what  the  Duke  had  said. 
The  first  blow  inflicted  only  a  slight  wound.  The 
Duke  struggled,  rose  from  the  block,  and  looked  re- 
proachfully at  the  executioner.     The  head  sank  down 

1  The  name  of  Ketch  was  often   associated  with  that  of  Jeffreys  in  the 
lampoons  of  those  days. 

"  While  Jeffreys  on  the  bench,  Ketch  on  the  gibbet  sits," 
says  one  poet.  In  tlie  3'ear  which  followed  Monmouth's  execution  Ketch 
was  turned  out  of  his  office  for  insulting  one  of  the  Sheriffs,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  a  butcher  named  Rose.  But  in  four  months  Rose  himself  was 
banged  at  Tyburn,  and  Ketch  was  reinstated.  Luttrell's  Diary,  Jan.  20. 
and  jMay  28.  1686.  See  a  curious  note  by  Dr.  Grey,  on  Hudibras,  part  iii. 
canto  ii.  line  1534. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  227 

once  more.  The  stroke  Avas  repeated  again  and  again  ; 
but  still  the  neck  was  not  severed,  and  the  body  con- 
tinned  to  move.  Yells  of  rage  and  horror  rose  from 
the  crowd.  Ketch  flung  down  the  axe  witli  a  curse. 
"I  cannot  do  it,"  he  said;  "my  heart  fails  me." 
"  Take  up  the  axe,  man,"  cried  the  sheriff.  "  Fling 
him  over  the  rails,"  roared  the  mob.  At  length  the 
axe  was  taken  up.  Two  more  blows  extinguished  the 
last  remains  of  life  ;  but  a  knife  was  used  to  separate 
the  head  from  the  shoulders.  The  crowd  was  wrought 
up  to  such  an  ecstasy  of  rage  that  the  executioner  was 
in  danger  of  being  torn  in  pieces,  and  was  conveyed 
away  under  a  strong  guard. ^ 

In  the  meantime  many  handkerchiefs  were  dipped  in 
the  Duke's  blood  ;  for,  by  a  large  part  of  the  multitude 
he  was  regarded  as  a  martyr  wlio  had  died  for  the 
Protestant  religion.  The  head  and  body  were  jilaced 
in  a  cofhn  covered  with  black  velvet,  and  were  laid 
privately  under  the  communion  table  of  St.  Peter's 
Chapel  in  the  Tower.  Within  four  years  the  pavement 
of  the  chancel  was  a^ain  disturbed,  and  hard  bv  the 
remains  of  Monmouth  were  laid  the  remains  of  Jetfre^-s. 
In  truth  there  is  no  sadder  spot  on  the  earth  than  that 
little  cemetery.  Death  is  there  associated,  not,  as  in 
Westminster  Abbey  and  Saint  Paul's,  with  genius  and 
virtue,  with  public  veneration  and  with  imperishable 
renown  ;  not,  as  in  our  humblest  churches  and  church- 
yards, with  everything  that  is  most  enflearing  in  social 
and  domestic  charities  ;  but  with  wliatever  is  darkest  in 
hmnan  nature  and  in  human  destiny,  with  the  savage 
triumph  of  implacable  enemies,  with  the  inconstancy, 

1  Account  of  the  exccutiiin  of  Mdnmouth,  signed  by  the  divines  who  at« 
tended  iiini.  Buctlt'ucli  MS.;  IJuriii;!,  i.  G40. ;  Van  Cittcrs,  July  XI.  I(i85; 
LuttieH's  Diary;  Evelyn's  Diary,  July  15.;  Barillon,  July  ^^. 


228  HISTORY   OP    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

the  ingratitude,  the  cowardice  of  friends,  with  all  the 
miseries  of  fallen  greatness  and  of  blicrlited  fame. 
Thither  have  been  carried,  through  successive  ages, 
by  the  rude  hands  of  gaolers,  without  one  mourner 
following,  the  bleeding  relics  of  men  who  had  been  the 
captains  of  armies,  the  leaders  of  parties,  the  oracles 
of  senates,  and  the  ornaments  of  courts.  Thither 
was  borne,  before  the  window  where  Jane  Grey  was 
praying,  the  mangled  corpse  of  Guilford  Dudley.  Ed- 
ward Seymour,  Duke  of  Somerset,  and  Pi'otector  of 
the  realm,  reposes  there  by  the  brother  whom  he  mur- 
dered. There  has  mouldered  away  the  headless  trunk 
of  John  Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester  and  Cardinal  of 
Saint  Vitalis,  a  man  worthy  to  have  lived  in  a  better 
age,  and  to  have  died  in  a  better  cause.  There  are 
laid  John  Dudley,  Duke  of  Northumberland,  Lord 
High  Admiral,  and  Thomas  Cromwell,  Earl  of  Essex, 
Lord  High  Treasurer.  There,  too,  is  another  Essex, 
on  whom  nature  and  fortune  had  lavished  all  their 
bounties  in  vain,  and  whom  valour,  grace,  genius,  royal 
favour,  popular  applause,  conducted  to  an  early  and 
ignominious  doom.  Not  far  off  sleep  two  chiefs  of  the 
great  house  of  Howard,  Thomas,  fourth  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk, and  Philip,  eleventh  Earl  of  Arundel.  Here  and 
there,  among  the  thick  graves  of  unquiet  and  aspiring 
statesmen,  lie  more  delicate  sufferers ;  Margaret  of 
Salisbury,  the  last  of  the  proud  name  of  Plantagenet, 
and  those  two  fair  Queens  who  perished  by  the  jealous 
rage  of  Henry.  Such  was  the  dust  with  which  the 
dust  of  Monmouth  mingled.^ 

Yet  a  few  months,  and  the  quiet, village  of  Todding-  | 

1  I  cannot  refrain  from  expressing  my  disgust  at  the  barbarous  stupidity 
which  has  transformed  this  most  interesting  little  church  into  the  likeneM 
of  a  meetinghouse  in  a  manufacturing  town.  ' 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  229 

ton,  in  Bedfordshire,  witnessed  a  still  sadder  funeral. 
Near  that  village  stood  an  ancient  and  stately  hall,  the 
seat  of  the  Wentworths.  The  transept  of  the  parish 
church  had  long  been  their  burial  })lace.  To  that 
burial  place,  in  the  sjjring  which  followed  the  death  of 
Monmouth,  was  borne  the  coffin  of  the  young  Baroness 
Wentwoith  of  Nettlestede.  Her  familj^  reared  a  sumjjt- 
uous  mausoleum  over  her  remains  :  but  a  less  costly 
memorial  of  her  was  long  contemplated  with  far  deeper 
interest.  Her  name,  carved  by  the  hand  of  him  whom 
she  loved  too  well,  was,  a  few  years  ago,  still  discerni- 
ble on  a  tree  in  the  adjoining  park. 

It  was  not  by  Lady  Wentworth  alone  that  the  mem- 
ory of  Monmouth  was  cherished  with  idol-  His  memory 
atrous  fondness.  His  hold  on  the  hearts  of  ^ff«™'^«'i  ^y 
the  people  lasted  till  the  generation  which  p®"'''®- 
had  seen  him  had  passed  away.  Ribands,  buckles, 
and  other  trifling  articles  of  apparel  which  he  had  worn, 
were  treasured  up  as  precious  relics  by  those  who  had 
fought  under  him  at  Sedgemoor.  Old  men  who  long 
survived  him  desired,  when  they  were  dying,  that  these 
trinkets  might  be  buried  with  them.  One  button  of 
gold  thread  which  narrowly  escaped  this  fote  may  still 
be  seen  at  a  house  which  overlooks  the  field  of  battle. 
Nay,  such  was  the  devotion  of  the  people  to  their  un- 
hajjpy  favourite  that,  in  the  face  of  the  strongest  evi- 
dence by  which  the  fact  of  a  death  was  ever  verified, 
many  continued  to  cherish  a  hope  that  he  was  still  liv- 
ing, and  that  he  would  again  appear  in  arms.  A  ]ier- 
son,  it  was  said,  who  was  remarkably  like  Monmouth 
had  sacrificed  himself  to  save  the-  Protestant  hero. 
The  vulgar  long  continued,  at  every  important  crisis, 
to  whis])or  that  the  time  Avas  at  hand,  and  that  King 
Monmouth    would    soon    show    himself       In    1()86,    a 


230  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

knave  who  had  pretended  to  be  the  Duke,  and  had 
levied  contributions  in  several  villages  of  Wiltshire, 
was  apprehended,  and  whipped  from  Newgate  to  Ty- 
burn. In  1698,  when  England  had  long  enjoyed  con- 
stitutional freedom  under  a  new  dynasty,  the  son  of 
an  innkeeper  passed  himself  on  the  yeomanry  of  Sussex 
as  their  beloved  Monmouth,  and  defrauded  many  who 
were  by  no  means  of  the  lowest  class.  Five  hundred 
pounds  were  collected  for  him.  The  farmers  provided 
him  with  a  horse.  Their  wives  sent  him  baskets  of 
chickens  and  ducks,  and  were  lavish,  it  was  said,  of 
favours  of  a  more  tender  kind  ;  for,  in  gallantry  at 
least,  the  counterfeit  was  a  not  unworthy  representa- 
tive of  the  original.  When  this  impostor  was  thrown 
into  prison  for  his  fraud,  his  followers  maintained  him 
in  luxury.  Several  of  them  appeared  at  the  bar  to 
countenance  him  when  he  was  tried  at  the  Horsham 
assizes.  So  long  did  this  delusion  last  that,  when 
George  the  Third  had  been  some  years  on  the  English 
throne,  Voltaire  thought  it  necessary  gravely  to  con- 
ftite  the  hypothesis  that  the  man  in  the  iron  mask  was 
the  Duke  of  Monmouth. ^ 

1  Observator,  August  1.  1635;  Gazette  de  France,  Nov.  2.  1686;  Letter 
from  Humphrey  Wanley,  dated  Aug.  25.  1698,  in  the  Aubrey  Collection; 
Voltaire,  Diet.  Phil.  Tliere  are,  in  the  Pepysian  Collection,  several  ballads 
written  after  Monmouth's  death,  which  represent  him  as  living,  and  pre- 
dict his  speedy  return.     I  will  give  two  specimens: 

"  Though  this  is  a  dismal  story 

Of  the  fall  of  my  design, 
Yet  I  '11  come  again  in  glory, 

If  I  Uve  till  eighty-nine  ; 
For  I  '11  have  a  stronger  army. 

And  of  ammuiiition  store." 

"Then  shall  Monmouth  in  his  glories 
Unto  his  English  friends  appear, 
And  will  stifle  all  such  stories 
As  are  vended  everywhere. 

"  They  'U  see  I  was  not  so  degraded, 

To  be  taken  gathering  pease, 

Or  in  a  cock  of  hay  up  braided. 

What  strange  stories  now  are  these !  " 


Again : 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  231 

It  is,  perhaps,  a  fact  scarcely  less  remarkable  that, 
to  this  day,  the  inhabitants  of  some  parts  of  tlie  west 
of  England,  wlien  any  bill  affecting  their  interests  is 
before  the  House  of  Lords,  think  themselves  entitled 
to  claim  the  help  of  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  the  de- 
scendant of  the  unfortunate  leader  for  whom  their  an- 
cestors bled. 

The  history  of  Monmouth  would  alone  suffice  to  re- 
fute the  imputation  of  inconstancy  which  is  so  fre- 
quently thrown  on  the  common  people.  The  common 
people  are  sometimes  yiconstant ;  for  they  are  human 
beings.  But  that  they  are  inconstant  as  compared 
with  the  educated  classes,  with  aristocracies,  or  with 
princes,  may  be  confidently  denied.  It  would  be  easy 
to  name  demagogues  whose  popularity  has  remained 
undimished  while  sovereigns  and  parliaments  have 
withdrawn  their  confidence  from  a  long;  succession  of 
statesmen.  When  Swift  had  survived  his  faculties 
many  years,  the  Irish  populace  still  continued  to  light 
bonfires  on  his  birthday,  in  commemoration  of  the 
services  which  they  fancied  that  he  had  rendered  to 
his  country  when  his  mind  was  in  full  vigour.  While 
seven  administrations  were  raised  to  power  and  hurled 
from  it  in  consequence  of  court  intrigues  or  of  changes 
in  the  sentiments  of  the  higher  classes  of  society,  the 
profligate  Wilkes  retained  his  hold  on  the  affections 
of  a  rabble  whom  he  pillaged  and  ridiculed.  Politi- 
cians, who,  in  1807,  had  sovight  to  curry  favour  with 
George  the  Third  by  defending  Caroline  of  Bruns- 
wick, were  not  ashamed,  in  1820,  to  curry  favour  with 
George  the  Fourth  by  persecuting  her.  But  in  1820, 
as  in  1807,  tlie  Avhole  body  of  working  men  was  fa- 
natically devoted  to  her  c-ause.  So  it  was  with  Mon- 
mouth.    In  1680   he   had  been  adored  alike   by  the 


232  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Y. 

gentry  and  by  the  peasantry  of  the  west.  In  1685  he 
came  again.  To  the  gentry  he  had  become  an  object 
of  aversion :  but  by  the  peasantry  he  was  still  loved 
with  a  love  strong  as  death,  with  a  love  not  to  be  ex- 
tinguished by  misfortunes  or  faults,  by  the  flight  from 
Sedgemoor,  by  the  letter  from  Ringwood,  or  by  the 
tears  and  abject  supplications  at  Whitehall.  The 
charge  which  may  with  justice  be  brought  against  the 
common  people  is,  not  that  they  are  inconstant,  but 
that  they  almost  invariably  choose  their  favourite  so  ill 
that  their  constancy  is  a  vice  aijd  not  a  virtue. 

While  the  execution  of  Monmouth  occupied  the 
.rueities  of  tlioughts  of  the  Loudoucrs,  the  counties  which 
In  the  West,  had  Hscn  against  the  government  were  endur- 
ing all  that  a  ferocious  soldiery  could  inflict.  Fever- 
sham  had  been  summoned  to  the  court,  where  hon- 
ours and  rewards  which  he  little  deserved  awaited 
him.  He  was  made  a  Knight  of  the  Garter  and  Cap- 
tain of  the  first  and  most  lucrative  troop  of  Life 
Guards  :  but  Court  and  City  laughed  at  his  military 
exploits ;  and  the  wit  of  Buckingham  gave  forth  its 
last  feeble  flash  at  the  expense  of  the  general  who  had 
won  a  battle  in  bed.^  Feversham  left  in  command  at 
Bridsewater   Colonel  Percy  Kirke,    a   mili- 

Kirke.  ^  j  ' 

tary  adventurer  whose  vices  had  been  devel- 
oped by  the  worst  of  all  schools,  Tangier.  Kirke  had 
during  some  years  commanded  the  garrison  of  that  town, 
and  had  been  constantly  employed  in  hostilities  against 
tribes  of  foreign  barbarians,  ignorant  of  the  laws  which 
regulate  the  warfare  of  civilised  and  Christian  nations. 
Within  the  ramparts  of  his  fortress  he  was  a  despotic 
prince.  The  only  check  on  his  tyranny  was  the  fear 
of  being  called  to  account  by  a  distant  and  a  careless 
1  London  Gazette,  August  3.  1685;  the  Battle  of  Sedgemoor,  a  Farce. 


1886.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  233 

government.  He  miglit  tlierefore  safely  proceed  to  the 
most  audacious  excesses  of  rapacity,  licentiousness  and 
cruelty.  He  lived  with  boundless  dissoluteness,  and 
procured  by  extortion  the  means  of  indulgence.  No 
goods  could  be  sold  till  Kirke  had  had  the  refusal  of 
them.  No  question  of  right  could  be  decided  till  Kirke 
had  been  bribed.  Once,  merely  ft'om  a  malignant 
whim,  he  staved  all  the  wine  in  a  vintner's  cellar.  On 
another  occasion  he  drove  all  the  Jews  from  Tanmer. 
Two  of  them  he  sent  to  the  Spanish  inquisition,  which 
forthwith  burned  them.  Under  this  iron  domination 
scarce  a  complaint  was  heard ;  for  hatred  was  effectually 
kept  down  by  terror.  Two  persons  who  had  been  refrac- 
tory were  found  murdered  ;  and  it  was  universally  be- 
lieved that  they  had  been  slain  by  Kirke's  order.  When 
his  soldiers  displeased  him  he  flogged  them  with  merci- 
less severity  :  but  he  indemnified  them  by  permitting 
them  to  sleep  on  watch,  to  reel  drunk  about  the  streets, 
to  rob,  beat,  and  insult  the  merchants  and  the  laboui'ers. 
When  Tangier  was  abandoned,  Kirke  returned  to 
England.  He  still  continued  to  command  his  old  sol- 
diers, who  were  designated  sometimes  as  the  First  Tan- 
gier Regiment,  and  sometimes  as  Queen  Catharine's 
Regiment.  As  they  had  been  levied  for  the  purpose 
of  waging  war  on  an  infidel  nation,  they  bore  on  their 
flag  a  Christian  emblem,  the  Paschal  Lamb.  In  allu- 
sion to  this  device,  and  with  a  bitterlv  ironical  mean- 
ing,  these  men,  the  rudest  and  most  ferocious  in  the 
English  army,  were  called  Kirke's  Lambs.  The  regi- 
ment, now  the  second  of  the  line,  still  retains  this  an- 
cient badge,  which  is  however  thrown  into  the  shade 
by  decorations  honoui'ably  earned  in  Egypt,  in  Spain, 
and  in  the  heart  of  Asia.^ 

*  Pepys's  Diiirv,  kept  at  Tjinfjier;  Historical  Records  of  the  Second  or 
Qaeen's  Koyal  F!i'j;inu-nt  of  Foot. 


234  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

Such  was  the  captain  and  such  the  soldiers  who  were 
now  let  loose  on  the  people  of  Somersetshire.  From 
Bridcrewater  Kirke  marched  to  Taunton.  He  was 
accompanied  by  two  carts  filled  with  wounded  rebels 
whose  gashes  had  not  been  dressed,  and  by  a  long  drove 
of  prisoners  on  foot,  who  were  chained  two  and  two. 
Several  of  these  he  lianged  as  soon  as  he  reached  Taun- 
ton, without  the  form  of  a  trial.  Thev  were  not  suffered 
even  to  take  leave  of  their  nearest  relations.  The  sign 
post  of  the  White  Hart  Inn  served  for  a  gallows.  It  is 
said  that  the  work  of  death  went  on  in  sight  of  the  win- 
dows  where  the  officers  of  the  Tangier  regiment  were 
carousing,  and  that  at  every  health  a  wretch  was  turned 
off.  When  the  legs  of  the  dying  men  quivered  in  the 
last  agony,  the  colonel  ordered  the  drums  to  strike  up. 
He  would  give  the  rebels,  he  said,  music  to  their  danc- 
ing. The  tradition  runs  that  one  of  the  captives  was  not 
even  allowed  the  indulgence  of  a  speedy  death.  Twice 
he  was  suspended  fi'om  the  sign  post,  and  twice  cut 
down.  Twice  he  was  asked  if  he  repented  of  his  treason ; 
and  twice  he  replied  that,  if  the  thing  were  to  do  again, 
he  would  do  it.  Then  he  was  tied  up  for  the  last  time. 
So  many  dead  bodies  were  quartered  that  the  execu- 
tioner stood  ankle  deep  in  blood.  He  was  assisted  by 
a  poor  man  whose  loyalty  was  suspected,  and  who  was 
compelled  to  ransom  his  own  life  by  seething  the  re- 
mains of  his  friends  in  pitch.  The  peasant  who  had 
consented  to  perform  this  hideous  office  afterwards  re- 
turned to  his  plough.  But  a  mark  like  that  of  Cain 
was  upon  him.  He  was  known  through  his  village  by 
the  horrible  name  of  Tom  Boilman.  The  rustics  long 
continued  to  relate  that,  though  he  had,  by  his  sinful 
and  shameful  deed,  saved  himself  from  the  vengeance 
of  the  Lambs,  he  had  not  escaped  the  vengeance  of  a 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  235 

higher  power.  In  a  great  storm  he  fled  for  sliel- 
ter  under  an  oak,  and  was  there  struck  dead  by  liglit- 
nino;.^ 

The  number  of  those  who  wei*e  thus  butchered  can- 
not now  be  ascertained.  Nine  were  entered  in  the 
parish  registers  of  Taunton :  but  those  registers  con- 
tain the  names  of  such  only  as  had  Christian  burial. 
Those  who  were  hanged  in  chains,  and  those  whose 
heads  and  limbs  were  sent  to  the  neighbourins  villajres, 
must  have  been  much  more  numerous.  It  was  be- 
lieved in  London,  at  the  time,  that  Kirke  put  a  hun- 
dred captives  to  death  during  the  week  which  followed 
the  battle.2 

Cruelty,  however,  was  not  this  man's  only  passion. 
He  loved  money ;  and  was  no  novice  in  the  arts  of  ex- 
tortion. A  safe  conduct  mioht  be  bought  of  him  for 
thirty  or  forty  pounds  ;  and  such  a  safe  conduct,  though 
of  no  value  in  law,  enabled  the  purchaser  to  pass  the 
posts  of  the  Lambs  without  molestation,  to  reach  a  sea- 
port, and  to  fly  to  a  foreign  country.  The  ships  which 
were  bound  for  New  Eno;land  were  crowded  at  this 
jimcture  with  so  many  fugitives  from  Sedgemoor  that 
there  was  great  danger  lest  the  water  and  'provisions 
should  fail.^ 

Kirke  was  also,  in  his  own  coarse  and  ferocious  way, 
a  man  of  pleasure  ;  and  nothing  is  more  probable  than 
that  he  employed  his  power  for  the  purpose  of  gi'atify- 
ing  his  licentious  appetites.  It  was  reported  that  he 
conquered  the  virtue  of  a  beautiful  woman  by  promis-* 

1  Bloody  Assizes;  Burnet,  i.  CAT.;  Luttrell's  Diary,  July  15.  lOSS; 
Locke's  AVestern  Rubullioii;  Toulinin's  Ilistor}'  of  Taunton,  editel  bf 
Savage. 

2  Luttrell's  Diary,  July  1.5.  Ui8.5;  Toulmin's  Hi.story  of  Taunton. 
•  Oldiuixou,  705.;  Lite  and  Errors  of  John  Duntou,  chap.  vii. 


236  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

mg  to  spare  the  life  of  one  to  whom  she  was  strongly 
attached,  and  that,  after  she  had  yielded,  he  showed 
her  suspended  on  the  gallows  the  lifeless  remains  of  him 
for  whose  sake  she  had  sacrificed  her  honour.  This 
tale  an  impartial  judge  must  reject.  It  is  unsupported 
by  proof.  The  earliest  authority  for  it  is  a  poem  writ- 
ten by  Pomfret.  The  respectable  historians  of  that  age, 
while  they  speak  with  just  severity  of  the  crimes  of 
Kirke,  either  omit  all  mention  of  this  most  atrocious 
crime,  or  mention  it  as  a  thing  rumoured  but  not  proved. 
Those  who  tell  the  story  tell  it  with  such  variations  as 
deprive  it  of  all  title  to  credit.  Some  lay  the  scene  at 
Taunton,  some  at  Exeter.  Some  make  the  heroine  of 
the  tale  a  maiden,  some  a  married  woman.  The  relation 
for  whom  the  shameful  ransom  was  paid  is  described 
by  some  as  her  father,  by  some  as  her  brother,  and  by 
some  as  her  husband.  Lastly  the  story  is  one  which, 
long  before  Kirke  was  born,  had  been  told  of  many 
other  oppressors,  and  had  become  a  favourite  theme  of 
novelists  and  dramatists.  Two  politicians  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  Rhynsault,  the  favourite  of  Charles  the 
Bold  of  Burgundy,  and  Oliver  le  Dain,  the  favourite 
of  Lewis  the  Eleventh  of  France,  had  been  accused  of 
the  same  crime.  Cintio  had  taken  it  for  the  subject 
of  a  romance  :  Whetstone  had  made  out  of  Cintio's 
narrative  the  rude  play  of  Promos  and  Cassandra  ; 
and  Shakspeare  had  borrowed  from  Whetstone  the 
plot  of  the  noble  tragicomedy  of  Measure  for  Measure. 
As  Kirke  was  not  the  first,  so  he  was  not  the  last,  to 
whom  this  excess  of  wickedness  was  popularly  im- 
puted. During  the  reaction  which  followed  the  Jaco- 
bin tyranny  in  France,  a  very  similar  charge  was 
brought  against  Joseph  Lebon,  one  of  the  most  odious 
agents  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  and,  after 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  237 

inquiry,  was  admitted  even  by  his   prosecutors  to  be 
unfounded.-^ 

The  government  was  dissatisfied  with  Kirke,  not 
on  account  of  the  barbarity  with  which  he  had  treated 
his  needy  prisoners,  but  on  account  of  the  interested 
lenity  which  he  had  shown  to  rich  dehnquents.^  He 
was  soon  recalled  from  the  west.  A  less  irreo;ular 
and  more  cruel  massacre  was  about  to  be  perpetrated. 
The  vengeance  was  deferred  during  some  weeks. 
It  Avas  thought  desirable  that  the  Western  Circuit 
sliould  not  begin  till  the  other  circuits  had  terminated. 
In  the  mean  time  the  gaols  of  Somersetshire  and  Dor- 
setshire were  filled  with  thousands  of  captives.  The 
chief  friend  and  protector  of  these  unhappy  men  in 
tbeir  extremity  was  one  who  abhorred  their  religious 
and  political  oi)inions,  one  whose  order  they  hated,  and 
to  whom  they  had  done  unprovoked  wrong,  Bishop  Ken. 
That  good  prelate  used  all  his  influence  to  soften  the 
gaolers,  and  retrenched  from  his  own  episcopal  state 
that  he  might  be  able  to  make  some  addition  to  the 
coarse  and  scanty  fare  of  tliose  who  had  defaced  his  be- 
loved Cathedral.  His  conduct  on  this  occasion  was  of 
a  ])iece  with  his  whole  life.  His  intellect  was  indeed 
darkened    by  many  superstitions  and  prejudices:    but 

1  The  silence  of  Whig  writers  so  credulous  and  so  malevolent  as  Old- 
mixou  and  the  compilers  of  the  Western  Martyrolof^y  would  alone  seem  to 
me  to  settle  the  question.  It  also  deserves  to  be  remarked  that  the  story 
of  KhynsHult  is  told  by  Steele  in  the  Spectator,  No.  491.  Surely  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  believe  that,  if  a  crime  exactly  resembliii}^  that  of  llhvnsault 
bad  been  committed  within  living  memory  in  England  by  an  oHicer  of 
James  the  Second,  Steele,  who  was  indiscreetlj'  and  unseasonably  forward 
to  display  his  Whiggism,  would  have  made  no  allusion  to  that  fact.  For 
the  case  of  Lebon,  see  the  Mouiteur,  4  Messidor.  Pan  3. 

2  Sunderland  to  Kirke,  .luly  14.  and  28.  1G8.5.  "  His  Majesty,"  says 
Sunderland,  "  commands  me  to  signify  to  you  his  dislike  of  these  proceed- 
ings, and  desires  you  to  take  care  that  no  person  concerned  in  the  rebellion 
be  at  large."  It  is  but  just  to  add  that,  in  the  same  letter,  Kirke  is  blamed 
for  allowing  his  soldiers  to  live  at  free  c^uarter. 


238  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

his  moral  character,  when  impartially  reviewed,  sus- 
tains a  comparison  with  any  in  ecclesiastical  history, 
and  seems  to  approach,  as  near  as  human  infirmity  per- 
mits, to  the  ideal  perfection  of  Christian  virtue. ^ 

His  labour  of  love  was  of  no  long  duration.  A 
Jeffreys  sets  rapid  and  effectual  gaol  delivery  was  at  hand. 
western  ck-  Early  ill  September,  Jeffreys,  accompanied  by 
''"''•  four  other  judges,  set  out  on  that  circuit  of 

which  the  memory  will  last  as  long  as  our  race  and  lan- 
guage. The  officers  who  commanded  the  troops  in  the 
districts  through  which  his  course  lay  had  orders  to 
furnish  him  with  whatever  military  aid  he  might  re- 
quire. His  ferocious  temper  needed  no  spur  ;  yet  a 
spur  was  applied.  The  health  and  spirits  of  the  Lord 
Keeper  had  given  way.  He  had  been  deeply  morti- 
fied by  the  coldness  of  the  King  and"  by  the  insolence 
of  the  Chief  Justice,  and  could  find  little  consolation  in 
looking  back  on  a  life,  not  indeed  blackened  by  any 
atrocious  crime,  but  sullied  by  cowardice,  selfishness, 
and  servility.  So  deeply  was  the  unhappy  man  hum- 
bled that,  when  he  appeared  for  the  last  time  in  West- 
minster Hall,  he  took  with  him  a  nosegay  to  hide  his 
face,  because,  as  he  afterwards  owned,  he  could  not 
bear  the  eyes  of  the  bar  and  of  the  audience.  The 
prospect  of  his  approaching  end  seems  to  have  inspired 
him  with  unwonted  courage.     He  determined  to  dis- 


o 


1  I  should  be  verj-  glad  if  I  could  give  credit  to  the  popular  story  that  Ken, 
immediately  after  the  battle  of  Sedgemoor,  represented  to  the  chiefs  of  the 
royal  army  the  illegality  of  military  executions.  He  would,  I  doubt  not, 
have  exerted  all  his  influence  on  the  side  of  law  and  of  mercy,  if  he  had 
been  present.  But  there  is  no  trustworthy  evidence  that  he  was  then  in 
the  West  at  all.  Indeed  what  we  know  about  his  proceedings  at  this  time 
amounts  veiy  nearly  to  proof  of  an  alibi.  It  is  certain  from  the  Journals 
of  the  House  of  Lords  that,  on  the  Thursday  before  the  battle,  he  was  at 
Westminster.  It  is  equally  certain  that,  on  the  Monday  after  tiie  battle, 
he  was  with  Monmouth  in  the  Tower;  and,  in  that  age,  a  journey  from 
London  to  Bridgewater  and  back  again  was  no  light  thing. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  239 

charge  his  conscience,  requested  an  audience  of  the 
King,  spoke  earnestly  of  the  dangers  inseparable  from 
violent  and  arbitrary  counsels,  and  condemned  the 
lawless  cruelties  which  the  soldiers  had  committed  in 
Somersetshire.  He  soon  after  retired  from  London  to 
die.  He  breathed  his  last  a  few  days  after  the  Judges 
?et  out  for  the  West.  It  was  immediately  notified  to 
Jeffreys  that  he  might  expect  the  Great  Seal  as  the  re- 
ward of  faithful  and  vigorous  service.^ 

At  Winchester  the  Chief  Justice  first  opened  his  com- 
mission. Hampshire  had  not  been  the  the  a-  Trial  of  AUce 
ti'e  of  war ;  but  many  of  the  vanquished  reb-  '^  '^' 
els  had,  like  their  leader,  fled  thither.  Two  of  them, 
John  Hickes,  a  Nonconformist  divine,  and  Richard 
Nelthorpe,  a  lawyer  who  had  been  outlawed  for  his 
share  in  the  Rye  House  Plot,  had  sought  refuge  at  the 
house  of  Alice,  widow  of  John  Lisle.  John  Lisle  had 
sate  in  the  Long;  Parliament  and  in  the  Hioh  Court  of 
Justice,  had  been  a  Commissioner  of  the  Great  Seal  in 
the  days  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  had  been  created 
a  lord  by  Cromwell.  The  titles  given  by  the  Protector 
had  not  been  recognised  by  any  government  Mdiich  had 
ruled  England  since  the  downfall  of  his  house  ;  but 
they  appear  to  have  been  often  used  in  convei'sation 
even  by  Royalists.  John  Lisle's  widow  was  therefore 
commonly  known  as  the  Lady  Alice.  She  was  related 
to  many  respectable,  and  to  some  noble,  families  ;  and 
she  was  generally  esteemed  even  by  the  Tory  gentle- 
men of  her  county.  For  it  was  well  known  to  them 
that  she  had  deeply  regretted  some  violent  acts  in  which 
her  husband  had  borne  a  part,  that  she  had  shed  bitter 

1  North's  Life  of  Guiltlfonl,  2G0.-263.  273.;  Mackintosh's  View  of  the 
Reign  of  James  the  Second,  page  16,  note;  Letter  of  Jeffreys  to  Sunder 
land,  Sept.  5.  1685. 

VOL.  II.  16 


240  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

tears  for  Charles  the  First,  and  that  she  had  protected 
and  relieved  many  Cavaliers  in  their  distress.  The 
same  womanly  kindness,  which  had  led  her  to  befriend 
the  Royalists  in  their  time  of  trouble,  would  not  suffer 
her  to  refuse  a  meal  and  a  hiding  place  to  the  wretched 
men  who  now  intreated  her  to  protect  them.  She  took 
them  into  her  house,  set  meat  and  drink  before  them, 
and  showed  them  where  they  miglit  take  rest.  The 
next  morning  her  dwelling  was  surrounded  by  soldiers. 
Strict  search  was  made.  Hickes  Avas  found  concealed 
in  the  malthouse,  and  Nelthorpe  in  the  chimney.  If 
Lady  Alice  knew  her  guests  to  have  been  concerned  in 
the  insurrection,  she  was  undoubtedly  guilty  of  what  in 
strictness  is  a  capital  crime.  For  the  law  of  principal 
and  accessory,  as  respects  high  treason,  then  was,  and 
is  to  this  day,  in  a  state  disgraceful  to  English  juris- 
prudence. In  cases  of  felony,  a  distinction,  founded  on 
justice  and  reason,  is  made  between  the  pi'incipal  and 
the  accessory  after  the  fact.  He  who  conceals  from 
justice  one  whom  he  knows  to  be  a  murderer,  is  liable 
to  punishment,  but  not  to  the  punishment  of  murder ; 
but  he  who  shelters  one  whom  he  knows  to  be  a 
traitor  is,  according  to  all  our  jurists,  guilty  of  high 
treason.  It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  the  absurdity 
and  cruelty  of  a  law  Avhich  includes  under  the  same 
definition,  and  visits  with  the  same  penalty,  offences 
Iving  at  the  opposite  extremes  of  the  scale  of  guilt.  The 
feeling  which  makes  the  most  loyal  subject  shrink  from 
the  thought  of  giving  up  to  a  shameful  death  the  rebel 
who,  vanquished,  hinited  down,  and  in  mortal  agony, 
begs  for  a  morsel  of  bread  and  a  cup  of  water,  may  be 
a  weakness  :  but  it  is  surely  a  weakness  very  nearly 
allied  to  virtue,  a  weakness  which,  constituted  as  hu- 
man beings  are,  we  can  hardly  eradicate  from  the  mind 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  241 

without  eradicating  many  noble  and  benevolent  senti- 
ments. A  wise  and  good  ruler  may  not  think  it  right 
to  sanction  this  weakness  ;  but  he  will  generally  con- 
nive at  it,  or  punish  it  very  tenderly.  In  no  case  will 
he  treat  it  as  a  crime  of  the  blackest  dye.  Whether 
Flora  Macdonald  was  justified  in  concealing  the  attainted 
heir  of  the  Stuarts,  whether  a  braA^e  soldier  of  our  own 
time  was  justified  in  assisting  the  escape  of  Lavalette, 
are  questions  on  which  casuists  may  differ :  but  to  class 
such  actions  with  the  crimes  of  Guy  Faux  and  Fieschi  is 
an  outrage  to  humanity  and  common  sense.  Such,  how- 
ever, is  the  classification  of  our  law.  It  is  evident  that 
nothinji  but  a  lenient  administration  could  make  such  a 
state  of  the  law  endurable.  And  it  is  just  to  say  that, 
during  many  generations,  no  English  government,  save 
one,  has  treated  with  rigour  persons  guilty  merely  of 
harbouring  defeated  and  flying  insurgents.  To  women 
especially  has  been  granted,  by  a  kind  of  tacit  prescrip- 
tion, the  right  of  indulging,  in  the  midst  of  havoc  and 
vengeance,  that  compassion  which  is  tlie  most  endear- 
ing of  all  their  charms.  Since  the  beoinnino;  of  the 
great  civil  war,  numerous  rebels,  some  of  them  liir  more 
important  than  Hickes  or  Nelthorj)e,  have  been  pro- 
tected against  the  severity  of  victorious  governments 
by  female  adroitness  and  generosity.  But  no  Eng- 
lish ruler  who  has  been  thus  bafHed,  the  savage  and 
im])lacable  James  alone  excepted,  has  had  the  bar- 
barity even  to  think  of  putting  a  lady  to  a  cruel  and 
shameful    death   for   so    venial   and   amiable    a  trans- 


gression. 


Odious  as  the  law  was,  it  was  strained  for  the  pur- 
pose of  destroying  Alice  Lisle.  She  could  not,  accord- 
ing to  the  doctrine  laid  down  by  the  highest  authority, 
be  convicted  till  after  the  conviction  of  the  rebels  whom 


I 


242  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

she  had  harboured. ^  She  was,  however,  set  to  the 
bar  before  either  Hickes  or  Nelthoi-pe  had  been  tried. 
It  was  no  easy  matter  in  such  a  case  to  obtain  a  verdict 
for  the  crown.  The  witnesses  prevaricated.  The  jury? 
consisting  of  the  principal  gentlemen  of  Hampshire, 
shrank  from  the  thought  of  sendina;  a  fellow  creature  to 
the  stake  for  conduct  which  seemed  deserving  rather  of 
praise  than  of  blame.  Jeffreys  was  beside  himself  with 
fury.  This  was  the  first  case  of  treason  on  the  circuit ; 
and  there  seemed  to  be  a  strong  probability  that  his 
prey  would  escape  him.  He  stormed,  cursed,  and 
swore  in  lancmag-e  which  no  wellbred  man  would  have 
used  at  a  race  or  a  cockfight.  One  witness  named 
Dunne,  partly  from  concern  for  Lady  Alice,  and  partly 
from  fright  at  the  threats  and  maledictions  of  the  Chief 
Justice,  entirely  lost  his  head,  and  at  last  stood  silent. 
"  Oh  how  hard  the  truth  is,"  said  Jeffreys,  "  to  come 
out  of  a  lying  Presbyterian  knave."  The  witness,  after 
a  pause  of  some  minutes,  stammered  a  few  unmeaning 
words.  "  Was  there  ever,"  exclaimed  the  judge,  with 
an  oath,  "  was  there  ever  such  a  villain  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  ?  Dost  thou  believe  that  there  is  a  God  ? 
Dost  thou  believe  in  hell  fire  ?  Of  all  the  witnesses 
that  I  ever  met  with  I  never  saw  thy  fellow."  Still 
the  poor  man,  scared  out  of  his  senses,  remained  mute  ; 
and  again  Jeffreys  burst  forth.  "  I  hope,  gentlemen 
of  the  jury,  that  you  take  notice  of  the  horrible  carriage 
of  this  fellow.  How  can  one  help  abhorring  both  these 
men  and  their  religion  ?  A  Turk  is  a  saint  to  such  a 
fellow  as  this.  A  Pagan  would  be  ashamed  of  such 
villany.  Oh  blessed  Jesus  !  What  a  generation  of 
vipers  do  we  live  among  !  "  "I  cannot  tell  what  to 
say,  my  Lord,"  faltered  Dunne.    The  judge  again  broke 

1  See  the  preamble  of  the  Act  of  Parliament  reversing  her  attainder. 


1585.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  243 

foi'tli  into  a  volley  of  oaths.  "Was  there  ever,"  he 
cried,  "  such  an  impudent  rascal  ?  Hold  the  candle  to 
him  that  we  may  see  his  brazen  face.  You,  gentlemen, 
that  are  of  counsel  for  the  crown,  see  that  an  infor- 
mation for  perjury  be  preferred  against  this  fellow." 
After  the  witnesses  had  been  thus  handled,  the  Lady 
Ahce  was  called  on  for  her  defence.  She  began  by 
saying,  what  may  possibly  have  been  true,  that,  though 
she  knew  Hickes  to  be  in  trouble  when  she  took  him  in, 
she  did  not  know  or  suspect  that  he  had  been  concerned 
in  the  rebelHon.  He  was  a  divine,  a  man  of  peace.  It 
had,  therefore,  never  occurred  to  her  that  he  could 
have  borne  arms  against  the  government ;  and  she  had 
sup])Osed  that  he  wished  to  conceal  himself  because 
warrants  were  out  against  him  for  field  preaching.  The 
Chief  Justice  began  to  storm.  "  But  I  will  tell  you. 
There  is  not  one  of  those  lying,  snivelling,  canting  Pres- 
bytei'ians  but,  one  way  or  another,  had  a  hand  in  the 
rebellion.  Presbytery  has  all  manner  of  villany  in  it. 
Nothing  but  Presbytery  could  have  made  Dunne  such  a 
rogue.  Show  me  a  Presbyterian  ;  and  I  '11  show  thee 
a  lying  knave."  He  summed  up  in  the  same  style,  de- 
claimed during  an  hour  against  Whigs  and  Dissenters, 
and  reminded  the  jury  that  the  prisoner's  husband  had 
borne  a  part  in  the  death  of  Charles  the  First,  a  fact 
which  had  not  been  proved  by  any  testimony,  and  which, 
if  it  had  been  proved,  would  haA'e  been  utterly  irrelevant 
to  the  issue.  The  jury  retired,  and  remained  long  in 
consultation.  The  judge  grew  im])atient.  He  could 
not  conceive,  he  said,  how,  in  so  plain  a  case,  they 
should  even  have  left  the  box.  He  sent  a  messenjier 
to  tell  them  that,  if  they  did  not  instantly  return,  he 
would  adjourn  the  court  and  lock  them  up  all  night. 
Thus  put  to  the  torture,  they  came,  but  came  to  say 


244  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  Y. 

that  they  doubted  whether  the  charge  had  been  made 
out.  Jeffreys  expostulated  with  them  vehemently,  and, 
after  another  consultation,  they  gave  a  reluctant  verdict 
of  Guilty. 

On  the  following  morning  sentence  was  pronounced. 
Jeftrevs  oave  directions  that  Alice  Lisle  should  be 
burned  alive  that  very  afternoon.  This  excess  of  bar- 
barity moved  the  pity  and  indignation  even  of  the  class 
which  was  most  devoted  to  the  crown.  The  clergy  of 
Winchester  Cathedral  remonstrated  with  the  Chief  Jus- 
tice, who,  brutal  as  he  was,  was  not  mad  enough  to  risk 
a  quarrel  on  such  a  subject  with  a  body  so  much  re- 
spected by  the  Tory  party.  He  consented  to  put  off 
the  execution  five  days.  During  that  time  the  friends 
of  the  prisoner  besought  James  to  show  her  mercy. 
Ladies  of  high  rank  interceded  for  her.  Feversham, 
whose  recent  victory  had  increased  his  influence  at 
court,  and  who,  it  is  said,  had  been  bribed  to  take  the 
compassionate  side,  spoke  in  her  favour.  Clarendon, 
the  King's  brother  in  law,  pleaded  her  cause.  But  all 
was  vain.  The  utmost  that  could  be  obtained  was  that 
her  sentence  should  be  commuted  from  burning  to 
beheading.  She  was  put  to  death  on  a  scaffold  in  the 
market  place  of  Winchester,  and  underwent  her  fate 
with  serene  courage.^ 

In  Hampshire  Alice  Lisle  was  the  only  victim  :  but, 
The  Bloody  ^^^  ^^^  ^^7  foUowiug  her  execution,  Jeffreys 
Assizes.  reached  Dorchester,  the  principal  town  of  the 
county  in  which  Monmouth  had  landed,  and  the  judi- 
cial massacre  began. 

The  court  was  hung,  by  order  of  the  Chief  Justice, 
with  scarlet;  and  this  innovation  seemed  to  the  mul- 

1  Trial  of  Alice  Lisle  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Act  of  the  First 
of  William  and  Mary  for  annulling  and  making  void  the  Attainder  of  Alice 
Lisle,  widow;  Burnet,  i.  649.;  Caveat  against  the  Wbigs. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  245 

titude  to  indicate  a  bloody  purpose.  It  was  also  ru- 
moured that,  when  the  clergyman  who  preached  the 
assize  sermon  inforced  the  duty  of  mercy,  the  ferocious 
mouth  of  the  Judge  was  distorted  by  an  ominous  grin. 
These  things  made  men  augur  ill  of  what  was  to  follow. ^ 

More  than  thi'ee  hundred  prisoners  were  to  be  tried. 
The  work  seemed  heavy ;  but  Jeffreys  had  a  contrivance 
for  making  it  light.  He  let  it  be  understood  that  the 
only  chance  of  obtaining  pardon  or  respite  was  to  plead 
guilty.  Twenty-nine  persons,  who  put  themselves  on 
their  country  and  were  convicted,  were  oi-dered  to  be 
tied  up  without  delay.  The  remaining  prisoners  pleaded 
guilty  by  scores.  Two  hundred  and  ninety-two  re- 
ceived sentence  of  death.  The  whole  number  hanged 
in  Dorsetshire  amounted  to  seventy-four. 

From  Dorchester  Jeffreys  proceeded  to  Exeter.  The 
civil  war  had  barely  grazed  the  frontier  of  Devonshire. 
Here,  therefore,  comparatively  few  persons  were  capi- 
tally punished.  Somersetshire,  the  chief  seat  of  the  re- 
bellion, had  been  reserved  for  the  last  and  most  fearful 
vengeance.  In  this  county  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
three  prisoners  were  in  a  few  days  hanged,  drawn,  and 
quartered.  At  every  spot  where  two  roads  met,  on 
every  market  place,  on  the  green  of  every  large  village 
which  had  furnished  Monmouth  with  soldiers,  ironed 
corpses  clattering  in  the  wind,  or  heads  and  quarters 
stuck  on  poles,  poisoned  the  air,  and  made  the  traveller 
sick  with  horror.  In  many  parishes  the  peasantry  could 
not  assemble  in  the  house  of  God  without  seeing;  the 
gliastly  face  of  a  neighbour  grinning  at  them  over  the 
porch.  The  Chief  Justice  was  all  himself.  His  spirits 
rose  higher  and  higher  as  the  work  went  on.  He 
laughed,  shouted,  joked,  and  swore  in  such  a  way  tliat 

^  Bloody  Assizes 


246  HISTOEY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

many  tliought  him  drunk  from  morning  to  niglit.  But 
in  him  it  was  not  easy  to  distinguish  tlie  madness  pro- 
duced by  evil  passions  from  the  madness  produced  by 
brandy.  A  prisoner  affirmed  that  the  witnesses  who 
appeared  against  him  were  not  entitled  to  credit.  One 
of  them,  he  said,  was  a  Papist,  and  another  a  prostitute. 
"  Thou  impudent  rebel,"  exclaimed  the  judge,  "  to  re- 
flect on  the  King's  evidence  !  I  see  thee,  villain,  I  see 
thee  already  with  the  halter  round  thy  neck."  Another 
produced  testimony  that  he  was  a  good  Protestant. 
"  Protestant !  "  said  Jeffreys  ;  "  you  mean  Presby- 
terian. I  'U  hold  you  a  wager  of  it.  I  can  smell  a 
Presbyterian  forty  miles."  One  wretched  man  moved 
the  pity  even  of  bitter  Tories.  "  My  Lord,"  they  said, 
*'  this  poor  creature  is  on  the  parish."  "  Do  not  trouble 
yourselves,"  said  the  Judge,  "  I  will  ease  the  parish  of 
the  burden,"  It  was  not  only  against  the  prisoners  that 
his  fury  broke  forth.  Gentlemen  and  noblemen  of  high 
consideration  and  stainless  loyalty,  who  ventured  to 
bring  to  his  notice  any  extenuating  circumstance,  were 
almost  sure  to  receive  what  he  called,  in  the  coarse 
dialect  which  he  had  learned  in  the  pothouses  of  White- 
chapel,  a  lick  with  the  rough  side  of  his  tongue.  Lord 
Stawell,  a  Tory  peer,  who  could  not  conceal  his  horror 
at  the  remorseless  manner  in  which  his  poor  neighbours 
were  butchered,  was  punished  by  having  a  corj)se  sus- 
pended in  chains  at  his  pai'k  gate.^  In  such  spectacles 
originated  many  tales  of  terror,  which  were  long  told 
over  the  cider  by  the  Christmas  fires  of  the  farmers  of 
Somersetshire.  Within  the  last  forty  years  peasants,  in 
some  districts,  well  knew  the  accursed  spots,  and  passed 
them  unwillingly  after  sunset.^ 

1  Locke's  Western  Rebellion. 

2  This  I  can  attest  from  my  own  childish  recollections. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  247 

Jeffreys  boasted  that  he  had  hanged  more  traitors 
than  all  his  predecessors  together  since  the  Conquest. 
It  is  certain  that  the  number  of  persons  whom  he  put  to 
death  in  one  month,  and  in  one  shire,  very  much  ex- 
ceeded the  number  of  all  the  political  offenders  who  have 
been  put  to  death  in  our  island  since  the  Revolution. 
The  rebellions  of  1715  and  1745  were  of  longer  dura- 
tion, of  wider  extent,  and  of  more  formidable  aspect 
than  that  which  was  put  down  at  Sedgemoor.  It  has 
not  been  generally  thought  that,  either  after  the  rebel- 
lion of  1715,  or  after  the  rebellion  of  1745,  the  House 
of  Hanover  erred  on  the  side  of  clemency.  Yet  all 
the  executions  of  1715  and  1745  added  together  will 
appear  to  have  been  few  indeed  when  compared  with 
those  which  disgraced  the  Bloody  Assizes.  The  num- 
ber of  the  rebels  whom  Jeffreys  hanged  on  this  circuit 
was  three  hundred  and  twenty.^ 

Such  havoc  must  have  excited  disgust  even  if  the 
sufferers  had  been  generally  odious.  But  they  were, 
for  the  most  part,  men  of  blameless  life,  and  of  high 
religious  profession.  They  were  regarded  by  them- 
selves, and  by  a  large  prcjportion  of  their  neighbours, 
not  as  wrongdoers,  but  as  martyrs  who  sealed  with 
blood  the  truth  of  the  Protestant  religion.  Very  few 
of  the  convicts  professed  any  repentance  for  what  tliey 
had  done.  Many,  animated  by  the  old  Puritan  sj)irit, 
met  death,  not  merely  with  fortitude,  but  with  exulta- 
tion. It  was  in  vain  that  the  ministers  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church  lectured  them  on  the  guilt  of  rebellion 
and   on   the   importance   of  priestly  absolution.     The 

1  Lord  I-onsdale  s^ays  seven  hundred;  Burnet  six  hundred.  I  have  fol- 
lowed the  list  wiiich  the  .Ju<li,'es  sent  to  the  Trensurv,  and  wliicli  may  still 
be  8eei\  there  in  the  letter  liodk  of  1(585.  See  the  liloody  .Assizes;  Lncke'a 
Western  Rebellion;  the  Panegyric  on  Lord  Jeffreys;  Burnet,  i.  648.;  Each- 
ard,  iii.  775. ;  Oldmixon,  705. 


248  HISTORY  OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  T. 

claim  of  the  King  to  unbounded  authority  in  things 
temporal,  and  the  claim  of  the  clergy  to  the  spiritual 
power  of  binding  and  loosing,  moved  the  bitter  scorn 
of  the  intrepid  sectaries.  Some  of  them  composed 
hymns  in  the  dungeon,  and  chaunted  them  on  the 
fatal  sledge.  Christ,  they  sang  while  they  were  un- 
dressing for  the  butchery,  would  soon  come  to  rescue 
Zion  and  to  make  war  on  Babylon,  would  set  up  his 
standard,  would  blow  his  trumpet,  and  would  requite 
his  foes  tenfold  for  all  the  evil  which  had  been  inflicted 
on  his  servants.  The  dying  words  of  these  men  were 
noted  down ;  their  farewell  letters  were  kept  as  treas- 
ures ;  and,  in  this  way,  with  the  help  of  some  invention 
and  exaggeration,  was  formed  a  copious  supplement  to 
the  Marian  martyrology,^ 

A  few  cases  deserve  special  mention.  Abraham 
Abraham  Holmcs,  a  retired  officer  of  the  parliamen- 
Hoimes.  ^^^y  army,  and  one  of  those  zealots  who 
would  own  no  Kino;  but  Kino;  Jesus,  had  been  taken 
at  Sedgemoor.  His  arm  had  been  frightfully  mangled 
and  shattered  in  the  battle  ;  and,  as  no  surgeon  was  at 
hand,  the  stout  old  soldier  amputated  it  himself.  He 
was  carried  up  to  London,  and  examined  by  the  King 
in  Council,  but  would  make  no  submission.  "  I  am  an 
aged  man,"  he  said  ;  "  and  what  remains  to  me  of  life 
is  not  worth  a  falsehood  or  a  baseness.  I  have  always 
been  a  repubhcan  ;  and  I  am  so  still."  He  was  sent 
back  to  the  West  and  hanged.  The  peonle  remarked 
with  awe  and  wonder  that  the  beasts  which  were  to 
drag  him  to  the  gallows  became  restive  and  went  back. 
Holmes  himself  doubted  not  that  the  Angel  of  the 
Lord,  as  in  the  old  time,  stood  in  the  way  sword  in 

1  Some  of  the  prayers,  exhortations,  and  hymns  of  the  sufferers  will  b« 
fonnd  in  the  Bloody  Assizes. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  249 

hand,  invisible  to  human  eyes,  but.  visible  to  the  Infe- 
rior animals.  "  Stop,  gentlemen,"  he  cried,  "  let  me 
go  on  foot.  There  is  more  in  this  than  you  think. 
Remember  how  the  ass  saw  him  whom  the  prophet 
could  not  see."  He  walked  manfully  to  the  gallows, 
harangued  the  people  with  a  smile,  prayed  fervently 
that  God  would  hasten  the  downfall  of  Antichrist  and 
the  deliverance  of  England,  and  went  up  the  ladder 
with  an  apology  for  mounting  so  awkwardly.  "  You 
see,"  he  said,  "  I  have  but  one  arm."  ^ 

Not  less  courageously  died  Christopher  Battiscombe, 
a  young  Templar  of  good  family  and  fn'tune  ohristopher 
who,  at  Dorchester,  an  agreeable  provincial  i^''^"'«'^o»'i'e- 
town  proud  of  its  taste  and  refinement,  was  regarded 
by  all  as  the  model  of  a  fine  gentleman.  Great  in- 
terest was  made  to  save  him.  It  was  believed  throuo-h 
the  west  of  England  that  he  was  engaged  to  a  young 
lady  of  gentle  blood,  the  sister  of  the  Sheriff,  that  she 
threw  herself  at  the  feet  of  Jeffreys  to  beg  for  mercy, 
and  that  Jeffi'eys  drove  her  from  him  with  a  jest  so 
hideous  that  to  repeat  it  would  be  an  offence  against 
decency  and  humanity.  Her  lover  suffered  at  Lyme 
piously  and  courageously.^ 

A  still  deeper  interest  was  excited  by  the  fate  of 
two  gallant  brothers,  William  and  Benjamin   Theiiew- 
Hewling.     The}''  were  young,  handsome,  ac-   ''"^*'' 
complished,  and  \v(>ll  connected.    Their  maternal  grand- 
father was  named  Kiliin.     He  was  one  of  the  first  mer- 


1  Bloody  Assizes;  Locke's  Western  Rebellion;  Lord  Lonsdale's  Memoirs; 
Account  of  the  Hattle  of  Sed^emoor  in  the  Ilardwickc  Papers. 

'I'hc  story  ill  Clarke's  Life  of  .lames  the  Second,  ii.  43.,  is  not  taken  from 
the  King's  manuscripts,  and  sufficiently  refutes  itself. 

-  151ondy  Assizes;  Locke's  Western  I{cl)ellion:  Huinhle  Petition  of 
Widows  and  fatherless  Children  in  the  West  of  England;  Panegyric  on 
Lord  JeflVeys. 


260  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

chants  in  London,  and  was  o-enerallv  considered  as  the 
head  of  the  Baptists.  The  chief  justice  behaved  to 
Wilham  Hewhng  on  the  trial  with  characteristic  bru- 
tahty.  "  You  have  a  grandfather,"  he  said,  "  who 
deserves  to  be  hanged  as  ricldy  as  you."  The  poor 
lad,  who  was  only  nineteen,  suffered  death  with  so 
much  meekness  and  fortitude,  that  an  officer  of  the 
army  who  attended  the  execution,  and  who  had  made 
himself  remarkable  by  rudeness  and  severity,  was 
strangely  melted,  and  said,  "  I  do  not  believe  that 
my  Lord  Cliief  Justice  himself  could  be  proof  against 
this."  Hopes  were  entertained  that  Benjamin  would 
be  pardoned.  One  victim  of  tender  years  was  surely 
enough  for  one  house  to  furnish.  Even  Jeffreys  was, 
or  pretended  to  be,  inclined  to  lenity.  The  truth  was 
that  one  of  his  kinsmen,  from  whom  he  had  large  ex- 
pectations, and  whom,  therefore,  he  could  not  treat  as 
he  generally  treated  intercessors,  pleaded  strongly  for 
the  afflicted  family.  Time  was  allowed  for  a  reference 
to  London.  The  sister  of  the  prisoner  went  to  White- 
hall with  a  petition.  Many  courtiers  wished  her  suc- 
cess ;  and  Churchill,  among  whose  numerous  faults 
cruelty  had  no  place,  obtained  admittance  for  her. 
"  I  wish  well  to  your  suit  with  all  my  heart,"  he  said, 
as  they  stood  together  in  the  antechamber ;  "  but  do 
not  flatter  yourself  with  hopes.  This  marble,"  and  he 
laid  his  hand  on  the  chimney  piece,  "  is  not  harder  than 
the  King."  The  prediction  proved  true.  James  was 
inexorable.  Benjamin  Hewling  died  with  dauntless 
courage,  amidst  lamentations  in  which  the  soldiers  who 
kept  guard  round  the  gallows  could  not  refi'ain  from 
joining.^ 

1  As  to  the  Hewlings,  I  have  followed  Kiffin's  Memoirs,  and  Mr.  Hew- 
ling Luson's  narrative,  which  -vvill  be  found  in  the  second  edition  of  the 


1685.)  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  261 

Yet  those  rebels  who  were  doomed  to  deatli  were 
less  to  be  pitied  than  some  of  the  survivors.  Several 
prisoners  to  whom  Jeffreys  was  unable  to  bring  home 
the  charo;e  of  hisrh  treason  were  convicted  of  misde- 
meanours,  and  were  sentenced  to  scourging  not  less 
terrible  than  that  which  Oates  had  undergone.  A 
woman  for  some  idle  words,  such  as  had  been  uttered 
by  half  the  women  in  the  districts  where  the  war  had 
raged,  was  condemned  to  be  whipped  through  all  the 
market  towns  in  the  county  of  Dorset.  She  suffered 
part  of  her  punishment  before  Jeffreys  returned  to 
London  :  but,  when  he  was  no  longer  in  the  West, 
the  eaolers,  with  the  humane  connivance  of  the  mao'is- 
trates,  took  on  themselves  the  responsibility  of  sparing 
her  any  further  torture.  A  still  more  fright-  v„„isi,ni,,„t 
ful  sentence  was  passed  on  a-lad  named  Tut-  '^f'^'"''''""- 
chin,  who  was  tried  for  seditious  words.  He  was,  as 
usual,  inteiTupted  in  his  defence  by  ribaldr}^  and  scur- 
rility from  the  judgment  seat.  "  You  are  a  rebel ;  and 
all  your  family  have  been  rebels  since  Adam.  They 
tell  me  that  you  are  a  poet.  I  '11  cap  verses  with 
you."  The  sentence  was  that  the  boy  should  be  im- 
prisoned seven  years,  and  should,  during  that  period, 
be  flo<x<xed  throujth  everv  market  town  in  Dorsetshire 
every  year.  The  women  in  tiie  galleries  burst  into 
tears.  The  clerk  of  the  arraigns  stood  up  in  great 
disorder.  "  My  lord,"  said  he,  "  the  prisoner  is  very 
young.  There  are  many  market  towns  in  our  county. 
The  sentence  amounts  to  whipping  once  a  fortnight  for 
seven  years."  "If  he  is  a  young  man,"  said  Jeffreys, 
"  he  is  an   old  rogue.     Ladies,  you  do  not  know  the 

Hughes  Corrcspondi'iire,  vol.  ii.  Appendix.  The  accounts  in  Locke's  West- 
ern Hebellion  ami  in  the  I'anefjyric  on  .IcHreys  are  full  of  errors.  Great 
part  of  the  account  in  the  i'loody  Assizes  was  written  by  Kiffin,  and  ai;ree« 
word  for  word  witli  liis  Memoirs. 


252  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

villain  as  well  as  I  do.  The  punishment  is  not  half 
bad  enough  for  him.  All  the  interest  in  England  shall 
not  alter  it."  Tutchin  in  his  despair  petitioned,  and 
probably  with  sincerity,  that  he  might  be  hanged. 
Fortunately  for  him  he  was,  just  at  this  conjuncture, 
taken  ill  of  the  smallpox  and  given  over.  As  it  seemed 
highly  improbable  that  the  sentence  would  ever  be  ex- 
ecuted, the  Chief  Justice  consented  to  remit  it,  in  re- 
turn for  a  bribe  which  reduced  the  prisoner  to  poverty. 
The  temper  of  Tutchin,  not  originally  very  mild,  was 
exasperated  to  madness  by  what  he  had  undergone. 
He  lived  to  be  known  as  one  of  the  most  acrimonious 
and  pertinacious  enemies  of  the  House  of  Stuart  and 
of  the  Tory  party.^ 

The  number  of  prisoners  whom  Jeffreys  transported 
Rebels  ^'^^    eight   hundred   and   forty-one.      These 

transported,  ^gn^  morc  wrctchcd  than  their  associates 
who  suffered  death,  were  distributed  into  gangs,  and  be- 
stowed on  persons  who  enjoyed  favour  at  court.  The 
conditions  of  the  gift  were  that  the  convicts  should  be 
carried  beyond  sea  as  slaves,  that  they  should  not  be 
emancipated  for  ten  years,  and  that  the  place  of  their 
banishment  should  be  some  West  Indian  island.  This 
last  article  was  studiously  framed  for  the  purpose  of 
aggravating  the  misery  of  the  exiles.  In  New  Eng- 
land or  New  Jersey  they  would  have  found  a  popula- 
tion kindly  disposed  to  them  and  a  climate  not  unfa- 
vourable to  their  health  and  vigour.  It  was  therefore 
determined  that  they  should  be  sent  to  colonies  where 
a  Puritan  could  hope  to  inspire  little  sympatliy,  and 
where  a  labourer  born  in  the  temperate  zone  could 
hope  to  enjoy  little  health.  Such  was  the  state  of  the 
slave  market  that  these  bondmen,  long  as  was  the  pas- 

*  See  Tutchin's  account  of  his  own  case  in  the  Bloodv  Assizes 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  268 

sage,  and  sickly  as  they  were  likely  to  prove,  were  still 
very  valuable.  It  was  estimated  by  Jeffreys  that,  on 
an  average,  each  of  them,  after  all  charges  were  paid, 
would  be  worth  from  ten  to  fifteen  jwunds.  There 
was  therefore  much  angry  com})etition  for  grants. 
Some  Tories  in  the  West  conceived  that  they  had,  by 
their  exertions  and  sufferings  during  the  insurrection, 
earned  a  right  to  share  in  the  profits  which  had  been 
eagerly  snatched  up  by  the  sycophants  of  Whitehall. 
The  courtiers,  however,  were  victorious.^ 

The  misery  of  the  exiles  fully  equalled  that  of  the 
neffroes  who  are  now  carried  from  Conoo  to  Brazil.  It 
a])})ears  from  the  best  information  which  is  at  present 
accessible  that  more  than  one  fifth  of  those  who  were 
shii)ped  were  flung  to  the  sharks  before  the  end  of  the 
voyage.  The  human  cargoes  were  stowed  close  in  the 
holds  of  small  vessels.  So  little  space  was  allowed  that 
the  wretches,  many  of  whom  were  still  tormented  by 
unhealed  wounds,  could  not  all  lie  down  at  once  with- 
out lying  on  one  another.  They  were  never  suffered 
to  go  on  deck.  The  hatchway  Avas  constantly  watched 
by  sentinels  armed  with  hangers  and  blunderbusses.  In 
the  dungeon  below  all  was  darkness,  stench,  lamenta- 
tion, disease  and  death.  Of  ninety-nine  convicts  who 
were  carried  out  in  one  vessel,  twenty-two  died  before 
they  reached  Jamaica,  although  the  voyage  was  per- 
formed with  unusual  sjieed.  The  sui'vivors  when  they 
arrived  at  their  house  of  bondajre  were  mere  skeletons. 
During  some  weeks  coarse  biscuit  and  fetid  water  had 
been  doled  out  to  them  in  such  scanty  measure  that 
any  one  of  them  could  easily  have  consumed  the  ration 
which  was  assigned  to  five.     They  were,  therefore,  in 

1  Sunderland  to  .leffrej's,  Sept.  14.  1685;  Jeflreys  to  the  King,  Sept.  19. 

1685,  in  the  State  Paper  OiTk-c. 


254  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  LCh.  V. 

such  a  state  tliat  the  merchant  to  whom  they  had  been 
consigned  found  it  expedient  to  fatten  them  before  sell- 
ing them.^ 

Meanwhile  the  property  both  of  the  rebels  who  had 
Confiscation    suffered  death,  and  of  those  more  unfortunate 

andextor-  •  i        •  i  i  •       i 

tion.  men  who  were  withenng  under  the  tropical 

sun,  was  fought  for  and  torn  in  pieces  by  a  crowd  of 
greedy  informers.  By  law  a  subject  attainted  of  trea- 
son forfeits  all  his  substance  ;  and  this  law  was  en- 
forced after  the  Bloody  Assizes  with  a  rigour  at  once 
cruel  and  ludicrous.  The  brokenhearted  widows  and 
destitute  orphans  of  the  labouring  men  whose  corpses 
hung  at  the  cross  roads  were  called  upon  by  the  agents 
of  the  Treasury  to  explain  what  had  become  of  a 
basket,  of  a  goose,  of  a  flitch  of  bacon,  of  a  keg  of  cider, 
of  a  sack  of  beans,  of  a  truss  of  hay.^  While  the  hum- 
bler retainers  of  the  government  were  pillaging  the 
families  of  the  slaughtered  peasants,  the  Chief  Justice 
was  fast  accumulating  a  fortune  out  of  the  plunder  of 
a  higher  class  of  Whigs.  He  traded  largely  in  par- 
dons. His  most  lucrative  transaction  of  this  kind  was 
with  a  gentleman  named  Edmund  Prideaux.  It  is 
certain  that  Pi'ideaux  had  not  been  in  arms  against 
the  government ;  and  it  is  probable  that  his  only  crime 
was  the  wealth  which  he  had  inherited  from  his  father, 
an  eminent  lawyer  who  had  been  high  in  office  un- 
der the  Protector.  No  exertions  were  spared  to  make 
out  a  case  for  the  crown.     Mercy  was  offered  to  some 

1  The  best  account  of  the  sufferings  of  those  rebels  who  were  sentenced  to 
transportation  is  to  be  found  in  a  verj'  curious  narrative  written  by  John 
Coad,  an  honest,  Godfearing  carpenter,  who  joined  Monmouth,  was  badly 
wounded  at  Philip's  Norton,  was  tried  by  Jeffreys,  and  was  sent  to  Jamaica. 
The  original  manuscript  was  kindly  lent  to  me  by  Mr.  Phippard,  to  whom 
It  belongs. 

2  In  the  Treasury  records  of  the  autumn  of  1685  are  several  letters  di- 
recting search  to  be  made  for  trifles  of  this  sort. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  255 

prisoners  on  condition  that  tliey  would  bear  evidence 
against  Prideaux.  The  unfortunate  man  lay  long  in 
gaol,  and  at  length,  overcome  by  fear  of  the  gallows, 
consented  to  pay  fifteen  thousand  ])ounds  for  his  lib- 
eration. This  great  sum  was  received  by  Jeffreys. 
He  bought  with  it  an  estate,  to  which  the  people  gave 
the  name  of  Aceldama,  from  that  accursed  field  which 
was  purchased  with  the  price  of  innocent  blood. ^ 

He  was  ably  assisted  in  the  work  of  extortion  by 
the  crew  of  parasites  who  Avere  in  the  habit  of  drink- 
ing and  lauohino;  with  him.  The  office  of  these  men 
was  to  drive  hard  baro-ains  with  convicts  under  the 
strong  terrors  of  death,  and  with  parents  trembling 
for  the  lives  of  children.  A  portion  of  the  spoil  was 
abandoned  by  Jeffreys  to  his  agents.  To  one  of  his 
boon  companions,  it  is  said,  he  tossed  a  pardon  for  a 
rich  traitor  across  the  table  durino;  a  revel.  It  was  not 
safe  to  have  recourse  to  any  intercession  except  that  of 
his  creatures  ;  for  he  guarded  his  profitable  monopoly 
of  mercy  Avith  jealous  care.  It  was  even  suspected 
that  he  sent  some  persons  to  the  gibbet  solely  because 
they  had  applied  for  the  royal  clemency  through  chan- 
nels independent  of  him.^ 

Some  courtiers  nevertheless  contrived   to  obtain   a 
small  share  of  this  traffic.      The  ladies  of  the  Rapacity  of 
Queen's  hoiisehold   distinguished  themselves   .'n*;i^in,e" 
preeminently   by   raj)acity   and   hardhearted-  ^'''^"'*" 
ness.     Part  of  the  disgrace  which  they  incurred  falls 
on  their  mistress :  for  it  was  solely  on  account  of  the 
relation  in  which  they   stood   to  her  that  they  were 
able   to  enrich  themselves  by  so  odious  a  trade  ;  and 

1  Commons'  Journals,  Oct.  9.,  Nov.  10.,  Dec.  26.  1690;  Oldmixon,  706.; 
Panegyric  on  Jeft'reys. 

*  Life  and  Death  of  Lord  Jeffreys;  Panegyric  on  Jeffreys;  Kiffiu'e  Jle- 
moire. 

VOL.    II.  17 


256  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  ▼. 

there  can  be  no  question  that  she  might  with  a  word 
or  a  look  have  restrained  them.  But  in  truth  she  en- 
couraged them  by  her  evil  example,  if  not  by  her  ex- 
press approbation.  She  seems  to  have  been  one  of  that 
large  class  of  persons  who  bear  adversity  better  than 
])rosperity.  While  her  husband  was  a  subject  and  an 
exile,  shut  out  from  public  employment,  and  in  immi- 
nent danger  of  being  deprived  of  his  birthright,  the 
suavity  and  humility  of  her  manners  conciliated  the 
kindness  even  of  those  who  most  abhorred  her  religion. 
But  when  her  good  fortune  came  her  good  nature  dis- 
appeared. The  meek  and  affable  Duchess  turned  out 
an  ungracious  and  haughty  Queen.^  The  misfortunes 
which  she  subsequently  endured  have  made  her  an 
object  of  some  interest ;  but  that  interest  would  be  not 
a  little  heightened  if  it  could  be  shown  that,  in  the 
season  of  her  greatness,  she  saved,  or  even  tried  to 
save,  one  single  victim  from  the  most  frightful  pro- 
scription that  England  has  ever  seen.  Unhappily  the 
only  request  that  she  is  known  to  have  preferred  touch- 
ing the  rebels  was  that  a  hundred  of  those  who  were 
sentenced  to  transportation  might  be  given  to  her.^ 
The  profit  which  she  cleared  on  the  cargo,  after  making 
large  allowance  for  those  who  died  of  hunger  and  fever 
during  the  passage,  cannot  be  estimated  at  less  than  a 
thousand  guineas.  We  cannot  wonder  that  her  attend- 
ants should  have  imitated  her  unprincely  greediness 
and  her  unwomanly  cruelty.  They  exacted  a  thousand 
pounds  from  Roger  Hoare,  a  merchant  of  Bridgewater, 
who  had  contributed  to  the  military  chest  of  the  rebel 

1  Burnet,  i.  3G8.;  Evelyn's  Diary,  Feb.  4.  168f,  July  13.  1686.    la  eB« 

of  the  satires  of  that  time  are  these  lines: 

"  When  Duchess,  she  was  gentle,  mild,  and  civil ; 
When  Queen,  she  proved  a  raging  furious  devil." 

«  Sunderland  to  Jeffreys,  Sept.  14. 1685. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  257 

army.  But  the  prfj  on  which  they  pounced  most 
eager] 3''  was  one  which  it  might  have  been  thought  that 
even  the  most  ungentle  natures  would  have  spared. 
Already  some  of  the  girls  who  had  presented  the  stand- 
ard to  Monmouth  at  Taunton  had  cruelly  expiated 
their  offence.  One  of  them  had  been  thrown  into  a 
prison  where  an  infectious  malady  was  raging.  She 
had  sickened  and  died  there.  Another  had  presented 
iierself  at  the  bar  before  Jeffi'eys  to  beg  for  mercy. 
"  Take  her,  gaoler,"  vociferated  the  judge,  with  one  of 
those  frowns  which  had  often  struck  terror  into  stouter 
hearts  than  hers.  She  burst  into  tears,  drew  her  hood 
over  her  face,  followed  the  gaoler  out  of  court,  fell  ill 
of  fright,  and  in  a  few  hours  was  a  corpse.  Most  of 
the  young  ladies,  however,  who  had  walked  in  the  pro- 
cession, were  still  alive.  Some  of  them  were  under  ten 
years  of  age.  All  had  acted  under  the  orders  of  their 
schoolmistress,  without  knowing  that  they  were  com- 
mitting a  crime.  The  Queen's  maids  of  honour  asked 
the  royal  permission  to  wring  money  out  of  the  parents 
of  the  poor  children  ;  and  the  permission  was  granted. 
An  order  Avas  sent  down  to  Taunton  that  all  these 
little  girls  should  be  seized  and  imprisoned.  Sir  Fran- 
cis Warre,  of  Hestercombe,  the  Tory  member  for 
Bridge  water,  was  requested  to  undertake  the  office  of 
exactino;  the  ransom.  He  was  charged  to  declare  in 
strong  lanffuao-e  that  the  maids  of  lionour  would  not 
endure  delay,  that  they  Avere  determined  to  prosecute 
to  outlawry,  unless  a  reasonable  sum  were  forthcoming, 
and  that  by  a  reasonable  sum  was  meant  seven  thou- 
sand pounds.  Warre  excused  himself  from  taking  any 
part  in  a  transaction  so  scandalous.  The  maids  of  hon- 
our then  requested  William  Penn  to  act  for  them ;  and 
Penn  accepted  the  commission.     Yet  it  should   seem 


258  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cm.  Y. 

that  a  little  of  tlie  pertinacious  scrupulosity  which  he 
had  often  sliown  about  taking  off  his  hat  would  not 
have  been  altogether  out  of  place  on  this  occasion.  He 
probably  silenced  the  remonstrances  of  his  conscience 
by  repeating  to  himself  that  none  of  the  money  which 
he  extorted  would  go  into  his  own  pocket ;  that  if  he 
refused  to  be  the  agent  of  the  ladies  they  would  find 
agents  less  humane  ;  that  by  complying  he  should  in- 
crease his  influence  at  the  court,  and  that  his  influence 
at  the  court  had  already  enabled  him,  and  might  still 
enable  him,  to  render  great  services  to  his  oppressed 
brethren.  The  maids  of  honour  were  at  last  forced  to 
content  themselves  with  less  than  a  third  part  of  what 
they  had  demanded. ^ 

No  Enghsh  sovereign  has  ever  given  stronger  proofs 
of  a  cruel  nature  than  James  the  Second.  Yet  his 
ci'uelty  was  not  more  odious  than  his  mercy.  Or  per- 
haps it  may  be  more  correct  to  say  that  his  mercy  and 
his  cruelty  were  such  that  each  reflects  infamy  on  the 
other.  Our  horror  at  tlie  fate  of  the  simple  clowns, 
the  young  lads,  the  delicate  women,  to  whom  he  was 
inexoi-ably  severe,  is  increased  when  we  find  to  whom 
and  for  what  considerations  he  granted  his  pardon. 

The  rule  by  which  a  prince  ought,  after  a  rebellion, 
to  be  guided  in  selecting  rebels  for  punishment  is  per- 
fectly obvious.  The  ringleaders,  the  men  of  rank,  for- 
tune and  education,  whose  power  and  whose  artifices 
have  led  the  multitude  into  error,  are  the  proper  ob- 
jects of  severity.  The  deluded  populace,  Avhen  once 
the  slaughter  on  the  field  of  battle  is  over,  can  scarcely 
be  treated  too  leniently.    This  rule,  so  evidently  agree- 

1  Locke's  Western  Rebellion ;  Toulmin's  History  of  Taunton,  edited  by 
Savage;  Letter  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset  to  Sir  F.  Warre;  Letter  of  Sun- 
derland to  Penn,  Feb.  13.  168|,  from  the  StiJte  Paper  Office,  in  the  Mack- 
intosh Collection.     (1848.) 


1«85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  259 

able  to  justice  and  humanity,  was  not  only  not  observed, 
it  was  inverted.  While  those  who  ought  to  have  been 
spared  were  slaughtered  by  hundreds,  the  few  who 
might  with  propriety  have  been  left  to  the  utmost 
rigour  of  the  law  were  spared.  This  eccentric  clem- 
ency has  perplexed  some  writers,  and  has  drawn  forth 
ludicrous  eulomes  from  others.  It  Avas  neither  at  all 
mysterious  nor  at  all  praiseworthy.  It  may  be  dis- 
tinctly traced  in  every  case  either  to  a  sordid  ot  to  a 
malignant  motive,  either  to  thirst  for  money  or  to  thirst 
for  blood. 

In  the  case  of  Grey  there  was  no  mitigating  circum- 
stance. His  parts  and  knowledge,  the  rank  cases  of 
which  he  had  inherited  in  the  state,  and  the  ^'^''^'' 
high  command  which  he  had  borne  in  the  rebel  army, 
would  have  pointed  him  out  to  a  just  government  as  a 
much  fitter  object  of  punishment  than  Alice  Lisle, 
than  William  Hewling,  than  any  of  the  hundreds  of 
ignorant  peasants  whose  skulls  and  quarters  were  ex- 
posed in  Somersetshire.  But  Grey's  estate  w^as  large 
and  was  strictly  entailed.  He  had  only  a  life  interest 
in  his  property ;  and  he  could  forfeit  no  more  interest 
than  he  had.  If  he  died,  his  lands  at  once  devolved  on 
the  next  heir.  If  he  were  pardoned,  he  would  be  able 
to  ])ay  a  large  ransom.  He  was  therefore  suffered  to 
redeem  himself  by  giving  a  bond  for  forty  thousand 
pounds  to  the  Lord  Treasurer,  and  smaller  sums  to 
other  courtiers.^ 

Sir  John  Cochrane  had  held  amono;  the  Scotch  rebels 
the  same  rank  which  had  been  held  by  Grey 
in   the   west   of  Ii^nirland.       That   Cochrane 
should  be  forgiven  by  a  prince  vindictive  beyond  all 

1  Bumet,  i.  646.,  and  Speaker  Onslow's  note;  Clarendon  to  Rochester, 
May  8. 168G. 


260  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  \C,h.  V 

example,  seemed  incredible.  But.  Cociirane  was  the 
younger  son  of  a  rich  family  ;  it  was  therefore  only  by 
sparing  him  that  money  could  be  made  out  of  him. 
His  father,  Lord  Dundonald,  offered  a  bribe  of  five 
thousand  pounds  to  the  priests  of  the  royal  household ; 
and  a  pardon  was  granted.^ 

Samuel  Storey,  a  noted  sower  of  sedition,  who  had 
storey  been  Commissary  to  the  rebel  army,  and  who 

had  inflamed  the  ignorant  populace  of  Somer- 
setshire by  vehement  harangues  in  which  James  had 
been  described  as  an  incendiary  and  a  poisoner,  was 
admitted  to  mercy.  For  Storey  was  able  to  give  im- 
portant assistance  to  Jeffreys  in  wringing  fifteen  thou- 
sand pounds  out  of  Prideaux.2 

None  of  the  traitors  had  less  right  to  expect  fa- 
wade,  Good-  vour  than  Wade,  Goodenough,  and  Ferguson. 
Fergiisdn.  Thcse  three  chiefs  of  the  rebellion  had  fled 
together  fi-om  the  field  of  Sedgemoor,  and  had  reached 
the  coast  in  safety.  But  they  had  found  a  frigate  cruis- 
ing near  the  spot  where  they  had  hoped  to  embark. 
They  had  then  separated.  Wade  and  Goodenough 
were  soon  discovered  and  brought  up  to  London. 
Deeply  as  they  had  been  implicated  in  the  Rye  House 
Plot,  conspicuous  as  they  had  been  among  the  chiefs 
of  the  Western  insurrection,  they  were  suffered  to 
live,  because  they  had  it  in  their  power  to  give  in- 
formation which  enabled  the  King  to  slaughter  and 
plunder  some  persons  whom  he  hated,  but  to  whom  he 
had  never  yet  been  able  to  bring  home  any  crime. ^ 

How  Ferguson  escaped  was,  and  still  is,  a  mystery. 

J  Burnet,  i.  634. 

*  Calamy's  Memoirs;  Commons'  Journals,  Dec.  2(5.  1690;  Sunderland  t« 
Jefireys,  Sept.  14.  1685;  Privy  Council  Book,  Feb.  26.  168|. 
»  linsdowne  JIS.  1152.;  Harl.  MS.  6845.;  London  Gazette,  July  20. 1686, 


1686.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  261 

Of  all  the  enemies  of  the  government  he  was,  without 
doubt,  the  most  deeply  ci'iminal.  He  was  the  original 
author  of  the  plot  for  assassinating  the  royal  brothers. 
He  had  written  that  Declaration  which,  for  insolence, 
malignity,  and  mendacity,  stands  unrivalled  even  among 
the  libels  of  those  stormy  times.  He  had  instigated 
Monmouth  first  to  invade  the  kingdom,  and  then  to 
usurp  the  crown.  It  was  reasonable  to  expect  that  a 
strict  search  would  be  made  for  the  arch  traitor,  as  he 
was  often  called  ;  and  such  a  search  a  man  of  so  sin- 
gular an  aspect  and  dialect  could  scarcely  have  eluded. 
It  was  confidently  reported  in  the  coffee  houses  of 
London  that  Ferguson  was  taken  ;  and  this  report 
found  credit  with  men  who  had  excellent  opportunities 
of  knowino;  the  truth.  The  next  thino;  that  was  heard 
of  him  was  that  he  was  safe  on  the  Continent.  It  was 
strongly  suspected  that  he  had  been  in  constant  com- 
munication with  the  ffovernment  against  which  he  was 
constantly  plotting,  that  he  had,  while  urging  his  asso- 
ciates to  every  excess  of  rashness,  sent  to  Whitehall 
just  so  much  information  about  their  proceedings  as 
might  suffice  to  save  his  OAvn  neck,  and  that  therefore 
orders  had  been  given  to  let  him  escape.^ 

1  Many  writers  have  asserted,  without  the  slightest  foundation,  that  a 
pardon  was  pranted  to  Ferguson  b_v  James.  Some  have  been  go  absurd  as 
to  cite  tliis  imaginary  pardon,  which,  if  it  were  real,  would  prove  on'}-  that 
Ferguson  was  a  court  spy,  in  proof  of  the  inagnaniinity  and  benignitj'  of 
the  prince  who  beheaded  Alice  Lisle  and  burned  Elizabeth  Gaunt.  Fergu- 
son was  not  only  not  specially  pardoned,  but  was  excluded  by  name  from 
the  general  pardon  published  in  the  following  spring.  (I^ondon  Gazette, 
March  15.  168A  )  If,  as  the  pul)'ic  suspected,  and  as  soenis  probable,  in- 
dulgence was  shown  to  him,  it  was  indulgence  of  which  James  was,  not 
without  rea-son,  ashamed,  and  which  was,  as  far  as  possible,  kept  secret. 
The  reports  which  were  current  in  I^nndon  at  the  time  are  mentioned  in 
the  Obscrvator,  Aug.  1.  1(>8.5. 

Sir  John  Keresln",  who  ought  to  have  been  well  informed,  positively 
affirms  that  Ferguson  was  taken  three  days  after  the  liaftle  of  Sedgemoor 
But  Sir  John  was  certainly  wrong  as  to  the  date,  and  may  therefore  hav* 


262  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V 

And  now  Jeffreys  had  done  his  work,  and  returned 
to  claim  his  reward.  He  arrived  at  Windsor  from  the 
West,  leaving  carnage,  mourning,  and  terror  behind 
him.  The  hatred  with  which  he  was  regarded  bv  the 
people  of  Somersetshii'e  has  no  parallel  in  our  histor\'. 
It  was  not  to  be  quenched  by  time  or  by  political 
changes,  was  long  transmitted  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration, and  raged  fiercely  against  his  innocent  prog- 
eny. When  he  had  been  many  years  dead,  when  his 
name  and  title  were  extinct,  his  granddaughter  the 
Countess  of  Pomfret,  travelling  along  the  western 
road,  was  insulted  by  the  populace,  and  found  that 
she  could  not  safely  venture  herself  among  the  de- 
scendants of  those  who  had  witnessed  the  Bloody  As- 
sizes.^ 

But  at  the  court  Jeffreys  was  cordially  welcomed. 
He  was  a  judge  after  his  master's  own  heart.  James 
had  watched  the  circuit  with  interest  and  delight.  In 
his  drawing  room  and  at  his  table  he  had  frequently 
talked  of  the  havoc  which  was  making  among  his  dis- 
affected subjects  with  a  glee  at  which  the  foreign  minis- 
ters stood  aghast.  With  his  own  hand  he  had  penned 
accounts  of  what  he  facetiously  called  his  Lord  Chief 
Justice's  campaign  in  the  West.  Some  hundreds  of 
rebels,  His  Majesty  wrote  to  the  Hague,  had  been 
condemned.  Some  of  them  had  been  hanged  :  more 
should  be  hanged  :  and  the  rest  should  be  sent  to  the 
plantations.  It  was  to  no  purpose  that  Ken  wrote  to 
implore  mercy  for  the  misguided  people,  and  described 
with  pathetic  eloquence  the  frightful  state  of  his  dio- 

been  wrong  as  to  the  whole  story.    From  the  London  Gazette,  and  from 
Goodenoiigh's  confession  (Lansdowne  MS.  1152.),  it  is  clear  that,  a  fort- 
night after  tiie  battle,  Ferguson  had  not  been  caught,  and  was  supposed  to 
be  still  lurking  in  England. 
1  Granger's  Biographical  History. 


1B85.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  263 

ccse.  He  complained  tliat  it  was  impossible  to  walk 
along  the  highways  without  seeing  some  terrible  spec- 
tacle, and  that  the  whole  air  of  Somersetshire  was 
tainted  with  death.  The  King  read,  and  remained, 
according  to  the  saying  of  Churchill,  hard  as  the  mar- 
ble chimney  pieces  of  Whitehall.  At  Windsor  the 
irieat  seal  of  England  was  put  into  the  hands  -Jeffreya 

f-^  o  i  made  Lord 

of  Jeffreys,  and  in  the  next  London  Gazette   chancellor, 
it  was  solemnly  notified  that  this  honour  was  the  re- 
ward of  the  man}'  eminent  and  faithful  services  which 
he  had  rendered  to  the  crown. ^ 

At  a  later  period,  when  all  men  of  all  parties  spoke 
with  horror  of  the  Bloody  Assizes,  the  wicked  Judge 
and  the  wicked  King  attempted  to  vindicate  themselves 
by  throwing  the  blame  on  each  other.  Jeff'reys,  in  the 
Tower,  protested  that,  in  his  utmost  cruelty,  he  had 
not  gone  beyond  his  master's  express  orders,  nay,  that 
he  had  fallen  short  of  them.  James,  at  Saint  Ger- 
main's, would  willingly  have  had  it  believed  that  his 
own  inclinations  had  been  on  the  side  of  clemency, 
and  that  unmerited  obloquy  had  been  brought  on  him 
by  the  violence  of  his  minister.  But  neither  of  these 
hardhearted  men  must  be  absolved  at  the  expense  of 
the  other.  The  plea  set  up  for  James  can  be  proved 
under  his  own  hand  to  be  false  in  fact.  The  plea  of 
Jeff'reys,  even  if  it  be  true  in  fact,  is  utterly  worth- 
less. 

The  slaughter  in  the  West  was  over.  The  slaughter 
in  London  was  about  to  begin.    The  govern-  Trial  and 

"  ~  ^      ^  execution 

ment  was  peculiarly  desirous  to  find  victims  of  comish. 
amonir  the  m-eat  Whio-  merchants  of  the  Citv.     They 
had,  in  the  last  reign,  been  a  formidable  part  of  the 

1  Burnet,  i.  648. ;  James  to  the  Prince  of  Orange,  Sept.  10.  and  24. 1686 
Lord  Lonsdale's  Memoirs;  London  Gazette,  Oct.  1.  1085. 


264  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cn.  V. 

strength  of  tlie  opposition.  They  were  wealthy  ;  and 
their  wealth  was  not,  like  that  of  many  noblemen  and 
country  gentlemen,  protected  by  entail  against  forfeit- 
ure. In  tlie  case  of  Grey,  and  of  men  situated  hke 
him,  it  was  impossible  to  gratify  cruelty  and  rapacity  at 
once  :  but  a  rich  trader  might  be  both  hanged  and  plun- 
dered. The  commercial  grandees,  however,  though  in 
general  hostile  to  Popery  and  to  arbitrary  power,  had 
yet  been  too  scrupulous  or  too  timid  to  incur  the  guilt 
of  hiffh  treason.  One  of  the  most  considerable  among 
them  was  Henry  Cornish.  He  had  been  an  Alderman 
under  the  old  charter  of  the  City,  and  had  filled  the 
office  of  Sheriff  when  the  question  of  the  Exclusion 
Bill  occupied  the  public  mind.  In  politics  he  was  a 
Whig :  his  religious  opinions  leaned  towards  Presby- 
terianism  :  but  his  temper  was  cautious  and  moderate. 
It  is  not  proved  by  trustworthy  evidence  that  he  ever 
approached  the  verge  of  treason.  He  had,  indeed, 
when  Sheriff,  been  very  unwilling  to  employ  as  his 
deputy  a  man  so  violent  and  unprincipled  as  Good- 
enough.  When  the  Rye  House  Plot  Avas  discovered, 
great  hopes  were  entertained  at  Whitehall  that  Cornish 
would  appear  to  have  been  concerned :  but  these  hopes 
were  disappointed.  One  of  the  conspirators,  indeed, 
John  Rumsey,  was  ready  to  swear  anything  :  but  a 
singlfe  witness  was  not  sufficient ;  and  no  second  wit- 
ness could  be  found.  More  than  two  years  had  since 
elapsed.  Cornish  thought  himself  safe  :  but  the  eye 
of  the  tyrant  was  upon  him.  Goodenougli,  terrified  by 
the  near  prospect  of  death,  and  still  harbouring  malice 
on  account  of  the  unfavourable  opinion  which  had 
always  been  entertained  of  him  by  his  old  mastei*, 
consented  to  supply  the  testimony  which  had  hitherto 
been  wanting.     Cornish  was  arrested  while  transacting 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  266 

business  on   the   Exchange,  was  hurried   to  gaol,  was 
kept  there  some  days  in  sohtary  confinement,  and  was 
brought  altogether  unprepared  to  the  bar  of  tlie  Old 
Bailey.     The   case  against  liim  rested  wholly  on  tlie 
evidence  of  Rumsey  and   Goodenough.      Both  Avere, 
by  their  own  confession,  accomplices  in  the  plot  with 
which  they  charged  the  prisoner.     Both  were  impelled 
by  the  sti'ongest  pressure  of  hope  and  fear  to  criminate 
liim.    Evidence  was  produced  which  proved  that  Good- 
enough  was  also  under  tlie  influence  of  personal  enmity. 
Rumsey's  story  was  inconsistent  with  the  story  whicii 
he   had   told  when   he  appeared  as  a  witness  against 
Lord  Russell.     But  these  thino-s  were  urjred  in  vain. 
On   the  bench  sate  three  judges  who  had  been  with 
Jeffreys  in  the  West ;  and  it  was  remarked  by  those 
M'ho  watched  their  deportment  that  they   had  come 
back  from   the  carnage  of  Taunton   in   a   fierce   and 
excited  state.     It  is  indeed  but  too  true  that  the  taste 
for  blood  is  a  taste  which  even  men  not  naturally  cruel 
may,   by  habit,   speedily   acquire.     The   bar  and   tlie 
bench  united  to  browbeat  the  unfortunate  Whi*:.     The 
jury,  named  by  a  courtly  Sheriff,  readily  found  a  ver- 
dict of  guilty  ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  indignant  murmurs 
of  the  pubh'c,  Cornish  suffered  death  within  ten  days 
after  he  had  been  arrested.     That  no  circumstance  of 
degradation  might  be  wanting,  the  gibbet  was  set  up 
where  King  Street  meets  Cheapside,  in  sight  of  the 
house  where  he  had  long  lived  in  general  respect,  of 
the  Exchange  where  his  credit  had  always  stood  higli, 
and  of  the  Guildliall  where  he  had  distiumiished  him- 
self  as  a  popular  leader.     He  died  with  courage  and 
with  many  ])ious  expressions,  but  showed,  by  look  and 
gesture,  such  strong  resentment  at   the  barbai-ity  and 
injustice  with  which  he  had  been  treated,  that  his  ene- 


2G6  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

mies  spread  a  calumnious  report  concerning  him.  He 
was  drunk,  they  said,  or  out  of  his  mind,  when  he  was 
turned  off.  WilHam  Penn,  however,  who  stood  neat 
the  gallows,  and  whose  prejudices  were  all  on  the  side 
of  the  government,  afterwards  said  that  he  could  see 
in  Cornish's  deportment  nothing  but  the  natural  indig- 
nation of  an  innocent  man  slain  under  the  forms  of 
law.  The  head  of  the  murdered  magistrate  was  placed 
over  the  Guildhall.^ 

Black  as  this  case  was,  it  was  not  the  blackest  which 
Trial  and        disgraced  the  sessions  of  that  autumn  at  the 

executions  of    ^,,"7  t-«     -i  *  i  l 

Ferniey  aod   (Jld  Bailev.     Anionff  the  persons  concerned 

Elizabeth  •  i  -r.  i  r  >^i  1 

Gaunt.  m   the   Kye   House   riot  was  a  man  named 

James  Burton.  By  his  own  confession  he  had  been 
present  when  the  design  of  assassination  was  discussed 
by  his  accomplices.  When  the  conspiracy  was  de- 
tected, a  reward  was  offered  for  his  apprehension. 
He  was  saved  from  death  by  an  ancient  matron  of 
the  Baptist  persuasion,  named  Elizabeth  Gaunt.  This 
woman,  with  the  peculiar  manners  and  phraseology 
which  then  distinguished  her  sect,  had  a  large  char- 
ity. Her  life  was  passed  in  relieving  the  unhappy  of 
all  religious  denominations,  and  she  was  well  known 
as  a  constant  visitor  of  the  gaols.  Her  political  and 
theological  opinions,  as  well  as  her  compassionate  dis- 
position, led  her  to  do  everything  in  her  power  for 
Burton.  She  procured  a  boat  which  took  him  to 
Gravesend,  where  he  got  on  board  of  a  ship  bound 
for  Aiusterdam.  At  the  moment  of  parting  she  put 
into  his  hand  a  sum  of  money  which,  for  her  means, 
was  very  large.      Burton,   after  living  some    time  in 

1  Trial  of  Cornish  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Sir  J.  Hawles's 
Remarks  on  Mr.  Cornish's  Trial;  Burnet,  i.  651. ;  Bloody  Assizes;  Stat 
1  Gul.  &  Mar. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  267 

exile,  returned  to  England  with  Monmouth,  fought  at 
Sedgemoor,  fled  to  London,  and  took  refuge  in  the 
house  of  John  Fernley,  a  barber  in  Whitechapel. 
Fernley  was  very  poor.  He  Avas  besieged  by  creditors. 
He  knew  that  a  reward  of  a  hundred  pounds  had  been 
offered  by  the  government  for  the  apprehension  of 
Burton.  But  the  honest  man  was  incapable  of  betray- 
ing one  who,  in  extreme  peril,  had  come  under  the 
shadow  of  his  roof.  Unhappily  it  was  soon  noised 
abroad  that  the  anger  of  James  was  more  strongly 
excited  against  those  who  harboured  rebels  than  against 
the  rebels  themselves.  He  had  publicly  declared  that 
of  all  forms  of  treason  the  hiding  of  traitors  from  his 
vengeance  was  the  most  unpardonable.  Burton  knew 
this.  He  delivered  himself  up  to  the  government ;  and 
he  gave  information  against  Fernley  and  Elizabeth 
Gaunt.  They  were  brought  to  trial.  The  villain 
whose  life  they  had  preserved  had  the  heart  and  the 
forehead  to  appear  as  the  principal  witness  against  them. 
They  were  convicted.  Fernley  was  sentenced  to  the 
gallows,  Elizabeth  Gaunt  to  the  stake.  Even  after  all 
the  horrors  of  that  year,  many  thought  it  impossible 
that  these  judgments  should  be  carried  into  execution. 
But  the  King  was  without  pity.  Fernley  was  hanged. 
Elizabeth  Gaunt  was  burned  alive  at  Tyburn  cm  the 
same  day  on  which  Cornish  suffered  death  in  Cheap- 
side.  She  left  a  paper  written,  indeed,  in  no  graceful 
style,  yet  such  as  was  read  by  many  thousands  with 
comj)assion  and  horror.  "  My  fault,"  she  said,  "was 
one  which  a  prince  might  well  have  forgiven.  I  did 
but  relieve  a  poor  family,  and  lo !  I  must  die  for  it." 
She  complained  of  the  insolence  of  the  judges,  of  the 
ferocity  of  the  gaoler,  and  of  the  tyranny  of  him,  the 
great  one  of  all,  to  whose  pleasure  she  and  so  many 


268  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cm.  ▼. 

other  victims  had  been  sacrificed.  In  as  far  as  they 
had  injured  herself,  she  forgave  them  :  but,  in  that 
they  were  implacable  enemies  of  that  good  cause  which 
would  yet  revive  and  flourish,  she  left  them  to  the 
judgment  of  the  King  of  Kings.  To  the  last  she  pre- 
served a  tranquil  courage,  which  reminded  the  specta- 
tors of  the  most  heroic  deaths  of  which  they  had  read 
in  Fox.  William  Penn,  for  whom  exhibitions  which 
humane  men  generally  avoid  seem  to  have  had  a  strong 
attraction,  hastened  from  Cheapside,  where  he  had  seen 
Cornish  hanged,  to  Tyburn,  in  order  to  see  Elizabeth 
Gaunt  burned.  He  afterwards  related  that,  when  she 
calmly  disposed  the  straw  about  her  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  shorten  her  sufferings,  all  the  bystanders  burst  into 
tears.  It  was  much  noticed  that,  while  the  foulest 
judicial  murder  which  had  disgraced  even  those  times 
was  perpetrating,  a  tempest  burst  forth,  such  as  had 
not  been  known  since  that  great  hurricane  which  had 
raged  round  the  death  bed  of  Oliver.  The  oppressed 
Puritans  reckoned  up,  not  without  a  gloomy  satisfac- 
tion, the  houses  which  had  been  blown  down,  and  the 
ships  which  had  been  cast  away,  and  derived  some  con- 
solation from  thinkinoc  that  heaA'en  was  bearing!  awful 
testimony  against  the  iniquity  which  afflicted  the  earth. 
Since  that  terrible  day  no  woman  has  suffered  death  in 
England  for  any  political  offence. ^ 

It  was  not  thought  that  Goodenough  had  yet  earned 
Trial  and  ex-  his  pardou.     The  government  was  bent  on 

ecution  of  ,  .  .      .  „  i  •    i  i 

Bateman.  clestroynig  a  victun  of  no  high  rank,  a  sur- 
geon in  the  city,  named  Bateman.  He  had  attended 
Shaftesbury   professionally,  and    had   been    a   zealous 

1  Trials  of  Femleyaiid  Elizabeth  Gaunt,  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials; 
Burnet,  i.  649.;  Bloody  Assizes;  Sir  J.  Bramston's  Memoirs;  Luttrell's 
Kary,  Oct.  23.  1685. 


1885.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  269 

Exclusionist.  He  may  possibly  have  been  privy  to 
the  Whig  plot ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  had  not  been 
one  of  the  leading  conspirators ;  for,  in  the  great 
mass  of  depositions  published  by  the  government,  his 
name  occurs  only  once,  and  then  not  in  connection 
with  any  crime  bordering  on  high  treason.  From  his 
indictment,  and  from  the  scanty  account  which  re- 
mains of  his  trial,  it  seems  clear  that  he  was  not  even 
accused  of  participating  in  the  design  of  murdering  the 
royal  brothers.  The  malignity  with  which  so  obscure 
a  man,  guilty  of  so  slight  an  offence,  was  hunted  down, 
while  traitors  far  more  criminal  and  far  more  eminent 
were  allowed  to  ransom  themselves  by  giving  evidence 
against  him,  seemed  to  require  explanation  ;  and  a  dis- 
graceful explanation  was  found.  When  Oates,  after 
his  scourging,  was  carried  into  Newgate  insensible,  and, 
as  all  thought,  in  the  last  agony,  he  had  been  bled  and 
his  wounds  had  been  dressed  by  Bateman.  This  was 
an  offence  not  to  be  forgiven.  Bateman  was  arrested 
and  indicted.  The  witnesses  against  him  were  men  of 
infamous  character,  men,  too,  who  were  swearing  for 
their  own  lives.  None  of  them  had  yet  got  his  par- 
don ;  and  it  was  a  popular  saying,  that  they  fished  for 
prey,  like  tame  cormorants,  with  ropes  round  their 
necks.  The  prisoner,  stupified  by  illness,  was  unable 
to  articulate  or  to  understand  what  passed.  His  son 
and  daughter  stood  by  him  at  the  bar.  They  read  as 
well  as  they  could  some  notes  which  he  had  set  down, 
and  examined  his  witnesses.  It  was  to  little  purpose. 
He  was  convicted,  hanged,  and  quartered.^ 

Never,  not  even  under  the  tyranny  of  Laud,  had  the 

1  Bateman's  Trial  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Sir  John  Hawles's 
Remarks.  It  is  worth  while  to  compare  Thomas  Lee's  evidence  on  thii 
•ccceion  with  his  confession  previously  published  by  authority. 


270  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

condition  of  the  Puritans  been  so  deplorable  as  at  that 
Cruel  perse-    time.     Nevor  had  soies  been  SO  actively  em- 

cutioD  of  ,  ,     .         ,  .  .  ^ 

theProtes-     ployed  ui  detecting  congregations.      JNever 

tant  Dissent-     i      j  •  i      •  i 

ers.  had    magistrates,  grand  jurors,  rectors    and 

churchwardens  been  so  much  on  the  alert.  Many 
Dissenters  were  cited  before  the  ecclesiastical  courts. 
Others  found  it  necessary  to  purchase  the  connivance 
of  the  agents  of  the  government  by  presents  of  hogs- 
heads of  wine,  and  of  gloves  stuffed  with  guineas.  It 
was  impossible  for  the  separatists  to  pray  together 
without  precautions  such  as  are  employed  by  coiners 
and  receivers  of  stolen  goods.  The  places  of  meeting 
were  frequently  changed.  Worship  was  performed 
sometimes  just  before  break  of  day  and  sometimes 
at  dead  of  night.  Round  the  building  where  the  lit- 
tle flock  was  gathered  sentinels  were  posted  to  give 
the  alarm  if  a  stranger  drew  near.  The  minister  in 
disguise  was  introduced  through  the  garden  and  the 
back  yard.  In  some  houses  there  were  trap  doors 
through  which,  in  case  of  danger,  he  might  descend. 
Where  Nonconformists  lived  next  door  to  each  other, 
the  walls  were  often  broken  open,  and  secret  passages 
were  made  from  dwelling  to  dwelHng.  No  psalm  was 
sung  ;  and  many  contrivances  were  used  to  prevent 
the  voice  of  the  preacher,  in  his  moments  of  fervour, 
from  being  heard  beyond  the  walls.  Yet,  with  all  this 
care,  it  was  often  found  impossible  to  elude  the  vigil- 
ance of  informers.  In  the  suburbs  of  London,  es]  e- 
cially,  the  law  was  enforced  with  the  utmost  rigour. 
Several  opulent  gentlemen  were  accused  of  holding 
conventicles.  Their  houses  were  strictly  searched, 
and  distresses  were  levied  to  the  amount  of  many  thou- 
sands of  pounds.  The  fiercer  and  bolder  sectaries, 
thus  diiven  from  the  shelter  of  roofs,  met  in  the  open 


1685.1  JAMES  THE  SECOND.  271 

air,  and  determined  to  repel  force  by  force.  A  Mid- 
dlesex justice,  who  had  learned  that  a  nightly  prayer 
meeting  was  held  in  a  gravel  pit  about  two  miles  from 
London,  took  with  him  a  strong  body  of  constables, 
broke  in  upon  the  assembly,  and  seized  the  preacher. 
But  the  congregation,  which  consisted  of  about  two 
hundred  men,  soon  rescued  their  pastor,  and  put  the 
magistrate  and  his  officers  to  flioht.^  This,  how- 
ever,  was  no  ordinary  occui'rence.  In  general  the 
Puritan  spirit  seemed  to  be  more  effectually  cowed  at 
this  conjuncture  than  at  any  moment  before  or  since. 
The  Tor}''  pamplileteers  boasted  that  not  one  fanatic 
dared  to  move  tongue  or  pen  in  defence  of  his  religious 
opinions.  Dissenting  ministers,  however  blameless  in 
life,  however  eminent  for  learning  and  abilities,  could 
not  venture  to  walk  the  streets  for  fear  of  outrages, 
whicli  were  not  only  not  repressed,  but  encouraged,  by 
those  whose  duty  it  was  to  preserve  the  peace.  Some 
divines  of  great  fame  were  in  prison.  Among  these 
was  Richard  Baxter.  Others,  who  had,  during  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  borne  up  against  oppression,  now  lost 
heart,  and  quitted  the  kingdom.  Among  these  was 
John  Howe.  Great  numbers  of  persons  who  had  been 
accustomed  to  fi-equent  conventicles  repaired  to  the 
parish  churches.  It  was  remarked  that  the  schis- 
matics who  had  been  terrified  into  this  show  of  con- 
formity might  easily  be  distinguished  by  the  difficuUy 
which  they  had  in  finding  out  the  collect,  and  by  the 
awkward  manner  in  which  they  bowed  at  the  name  of 
Jesus.'-^ 

1  Van  Cillers.  Ocl.  ^|.  1685. 

2  Neal's  Ilislory  of  the  I'urilnns,  Calamy's  Account  of  the  ejected  Minis- 
ters, and  the  Nonconformists'  Mi  nioiial,  contain  aliuiidant  proofs  of  the  se- 
verity of  tiiis  persecution.  Howe's  farewell  letter  to  his  flock  will  be  found 
in  the  interesting  life  of  that  great  man,  by  Mr.  Rogers.     Howe  complaim 

VOL.  II.  18 


272  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  V. 

Througli  many  years  the  autumn  of  1685  was  re- 
membered by  the  Nonconformists  as  a  time  of  misery 
and  terror.  Yet  in  that  autumn  might  be  discerned 
the  first  faint  indications  of  a  great  turn  of  fortune ; 
and  before  eighteen  months  had  elapsed,  the  intolerant 
King  and  the  intolerant  Church  were  eagerly  bidding 
against  each  other  for  the  support  of  the  party  which 
both  had  so  deeply  injured. 

that  he  could  not  venture  to  show  himself  in  the  streets  of  London,  and 
that  his  health  had  suffered  from  want  of  air  and  exercise.  But  the  most 
vivid  picture  of  the  distress  of  the  Nonconformists  is  furnished  by  their 
deadly  enemy,  J»»«traDge,  in  the  Observators  of  September  and  October, 
1686. 


1*85.1  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  278 


CHAPTER   VI. 

James  was  now  at  the  height  of  power  and  pros- 
perity.    Both  in  Eno-land  and  in  Scotland  lie  The  power  of 

James  at  the 

had  vanquished  his  enemies,  and  had  pun-  height. 
ished  them  with  a  severity  which  had  indeed  excited 
their  bitterest  hatred,  but  had,  at  the  same  time,  effect- 
ually quelled  their  courage.  The  Whig  party  seemed 
extinct.  The  name  of  Whig  was  never  used  except  as 
a  term  of  reproach.  The  Parliament  was  devoted  to 
the  King  ;  and  it  was  in  his  power  to  keep  that  Parlia- 
ment to  the  end  of  his  reign.  The  Church  was  louder 
than  ever  in  professions  of  attachment  to  him,  and  had, 
during  the  late  insurrection,  acted  up  to  those  profes- 
sions. The  Judges  were  his  tools  ;  and  if  they  ceased 
to  be  so,  it  was  in  his  power  to  remove  them.  The 
corporations  were  filled  with  his  creatures.  His  reve- 
nues far  exceeded  those  of  his  predecessors.  His  pride 
rose  high.  He  was  not  the  same  man  who,  a  few 
months  before,  in  doubt  whether  his  throne  might  not 
be  overturned  in  an  hour,  had  implored  foreign  help 
with  unkingly  su])j)lications,  and  had  accepted  it  with 
tears  of  gratitude.  Visions  of  dominion  and  glory  rose 
before  him.  He  already  saw  himself,  in  imagination, 
the  umpire  of  Europe,  the  cham])ion  of  many  states 
oppressed  by  one  too  powerful  monarchy.  So  early  as 
the  month  of  June  he  had  assured  the  United  Prov- 
inces tliat,  as  soon  as  the  affairs  of  England  were  settled, 
he  would  show  the  world  how  little  he  feared  France. 
In  conformity  with  these  assurances,  he,  within  a  month 


271  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cb.  V\. 

after  the  battle  of  Sedjxemoor,  concluded  with  the  States 
General  a  defensive  treaty,  framed  in  the  very  spirit 
of  the  Triple  League.  It  was  regarded,  both  at  the 
Hague  and  at  Versailles,  as  a  most  significant  circum- 
stance that  Halifax,  who  was  the  constant  and  mortal 
enemy  of  French  ascendency,  and  who  had  scarcely 
ever  before  been  consulted  on  any  grave  affair  since  the 
beginning  of  the  reign,  took  the  lead  on  this  occasion, 
and  seemed  to  have  the  royal  ear.  It  was  a  circum- 
stance not  less  significant  that  no  previous  commiTuica- 
tion  was  made  to  Barillon.  Both  he  and  his  master 
were  taken  by  surprise.  Lewis  was  much  troubled, 
and  expressed  great,  and  not  unreasonable,  anxiety  as 
to  the  ulterior  designs  of  the  prince  who  had  lately  been 
his  pensioner  and  vassal.  There  were  strong  rumours 
that  William  of  Orange  was  busied  in  organizing  a  great 
confederacy,  which  was  to  include  both  branches  of  the 
House  of  Austria,  the  United  Provinces,  the  kingdom 
of  Sweden,  and  the  electorate  of  Brandenburg.  It  now 
seemed  that  this  confederacy  wovild  have  at  its  head  the 
King  and  Parliament  of  England-^ 

In  fact,  necrotiations  tendino;  to  such  a  result  were 
Hisforei<'n  actually  Opened.  Spain  proposed  to  form  a 
policy.  close  alliance  with  James  ;  and  he  listened  to 

the  proposition  Avith  favour,  though  it  was  evident  that 
such  an  alliance  would  be  little  less  than  a  declaration 
of  war  against  France.  But  he  postponed  his  final  de- 
cision till  after  the  Parliament  should  have  reassembled. 
The  fate  of  Christendom  depended  on  the  temper  in 
which  he  might  then  find  the  Commons.  If  they  were 
disposed  to  acquiesce  in  his  plans  of  domestic  govern- 
ment, there  would  be  nothing  to  prevent  him  from  in- 

1  Avaux  Iseg.,  Aug.  _6  .  1G85;  Despatch  of  Van  Citters   and    his   col- 
leagues,  inclosing  the  treaty,  Aug.  14-.;  Lewis  to  Barillon,  Aug.  14.-  §q- 


1«6.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  275 

terfering  with  vigour  and  authoi*itj  in  the  great  dispute 
which  must  soon  be  brouglit  to  an  issue  on  the  Conti 
nent.  If  they  were  refractory,  lie  must  rehnquish  all 
thought  of  arbitrating  between  contending  nations,  must 
again  implore  French  assistance,  must  again  submit  to 
French  dictation,  must  sink  into  a  potentate  of  the  tliird 
or  fourth  class,  and  must  indemnify  himself  for  the  con- 
tempt with  which  he  would  be  regarded  abroad  by  tri- 
umphs over  law  and  public  opinion  at  home. 

It  seemed,  indeed,  that  it  would  not  be  easy  for  him 
to  demand  more  than  the  Commons  Avere  dis-  His  plans  of 
posed  to  give.  Already  they  had  abundantly  govemment. 
proved  that  they  were  desirous  to  maintain  his  prerog- 
atives unimpaired,  and  that  they  were  by  no  means 
extreme  to  mark  his  encroachments  on  the  rio-hts 
of  the  people.  Indeed,  eleven  twelfths  of  the  mem- 
bers were  either  dependents  of  the  court,  or  zealous 
Cavaliers  from  the  country.  There  were  few  things 
which  such  an  assembly  could  pertinaciously  refuse  to 
the  Sovereign  ;  but,  happily  for  the  nation,  those  few 
things  were  the  very  things  on  which  James  had  set 
his  heart. 

One  of  his  objects  was  to  obtain  a  repeal  of  the 
Habeas  Corpus  Act,  which  he  hated,  as  it  The  Habeas 
was  natural  that  a  tyrant  should  hate  the  corpus  Act. 
most  stringent  curb  that  ever  legislation  imposed  on 
tyranny.  This  feeling  remained  dee])ly  fixed  in  his 
mind  to  the  last,  and  appears  in  the  instructions  which 
he  drew  up,  in  exile,  for  the  guidance  of  his  son.^  But 
the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  though  passed  during  the  as- 
cendency of  the  Whigs,  was  not  more  dear  to  the  Whigs 
than  to  the  Tories.     It  is  indeed  not  wonderful  that 

1  Instructions  headed,  "  For  my  son  the  Prince  of  Wales,  1692,"  in  the 
Stuart  Papers. 


276  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

tills  great  law  should  be  highly  prized  by  all  English- 
men without  distinction  of  party  :  for  it  is  a  law  which, 
not  by  circviitous,  but  by  direct  operation,  adds  to  the 
security  and  liappiness  of  every  inhabitant  of  the  realm. ^ 

James  had  yet  another  design,  odious  to  the  party 
Thestandiug  whicli  had  sct  him  on  the  throne  and  which 
"""y-  had  upheld  him  there.     He  wished  to  form  a 

great  standing  army.  He  had  taken  advantage  of  the 
late  insurrection  to  make  large  additions  to  the  military 
force  which  his  brother  had  left.  The  bodies  now  des- 
ignated as  the  first  six  regiments  of  dragoon  guards,  the 
third  and  fourth  regiments  of  dragoons,  and  the  nine 
regiments  of  infantry  of  the  line,  from  the  seventh  to 
the  fifteenth  inclusive,  had  just  been  raised.^  The 
effect  of  these  augmentations,  and  of  the  recall  of  the 
garrison  of  Tangier,  was  that  the  number  of  regular 
troops  in  England  had,  in  a  few  months,  been  increased 
from  six  thousand  to  near  twenty  thousand.  No  Eng- 
lish King  had  ever,  in  time  of  peace,  had  such  a  force 
at  his  command.  Yet  even  with  this  force  James  was 
not  content.  He  often  repeated  that  no  confidence 
could  be  placed  in  the  fidelity  of  the  trainbands,  that 
they  sympathized  with  all  the  passions  of  the  class  to 
which  they  belonged,  that,  at  Sedgemoor,  there  had 
been  more  militia  men  in  the  rebel  army  than  in  the 
royal  encampment,  and  that,  if  the  throne  had  been  de- 
fended only  by  the  array  of  the  counties,  Monmouth 
would  have  marched  in  triumph  from  Lyme  to  Lon- 
don. 

The  revenue,  large  as  it  was  when  compared  with 

1  "  The  Habeas  Corpus,"  said  Johnson,  the  most  bigoted  of  Tories,  to 
Boswell,  "  is  the  single  advantage  which  our  government  has  over  that  of 
other  countries  " 

'^  See  the  Historical  Records  of  Regiments,  published  under  the  supervia- 
bn  of  the  Adjutant  General. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  277 

that  of  former  Kings,  barely  sufficed  to  meet  this  new 
charge.  A  great  part  of  the  produce  of  the  new  taxes 
was  absorbed  by  the  naval  expenditure.  At  the  close 
of  the  late  reign  the  whole  cost  of  the  army,  the  Tan- 
gier regiments  included,  had  been  under  three  hundred 
thousand  pounds  a  year.  Six  hundred  thousand  pounds 
a  year  would  not  now  suffice,^  If  any  further  aug- 
mentation were  made,  it  would  be  necessary  to  demand 
a  supply  from  Parliament ;  and  it  was  not  likely  that 
Parliament  would  be  in  a  complying  mood.  The  very 
name  of  standing  army  was  hateful  to  the  whole  nation, 
and  to  no  part  of  tlie  nation  more  hateful  than  to  the 
Cavalier  gentlemen  who  filled  the  Lower  House.  In 
their  minds  a  standing  army  was  inseparably  associated 
with  the  Rump,  with  the  Protector,  with  the  spoliation 
of  the  Church,  with  the  purgation  of  the  Universities, 
with  the  abolition  of  the  peerage,  with  the  murder  of 
the  King,  with  the  sullen  reign  of  the  Saints,  with  cant 
and  asceticism,  with  lines  and  sequestrations,  with  the 
insults  which  Major  Generals,  sprung  from  the  dregs  of 
the  people,  had  offered  to  the  oldest  and  most  honour- 
able flimihes  of  the  kingdom.  There  was,  moreover, 
scai'cely  a  baronet  or  a  squire  in  the  Parliament  who 
did  not  owe  part  of  his  importance  in  his  own  county 
to  his  rank  in  the  militia.  If  that  national  force  were 
set  aside,  the  gentry  of  England  must  lose  much  of 
their  dignity  and  influence.  It  was  therefore  probable 
that  the  King  would  Hnd  it  more  difficult  to  obtain  funds 
.or  the  sujjpoi't  of  his  army  than  even  to  obtain  the  re- 
peal of  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act. 

1  Barillon,  Dec.  ^^.  1685.  He  had  studied  the  subject  much.  "C'est 
ui.  dc'ttail,"  he  .says,  -'doiit  j'ai  connoi.ssance."  It  appear.s  from  the  Trea.s- 
ury  Warrant  Book  that  tlie  charfre  of  the  army  for  the  year  lOvST  was  fixed 
on  the  first  of  January  at  623, 104^.  9s.  lid. 


278  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

But  both  the  designs  which  have  been  mentioned 
Designs  in  Were  Subordinate  to  one  great  design  on  which 
Ro^anoato"  ^hc  Kiug's  wliole  soul  was  bent,  but  which 
ohc  religion,  ^^^^g  abhorred  by  those  Tory  gentlemen  who 
were  ready  to  shed  their  blood  for  his  rights,  abhorred 
by  that  Church  which  had  never,  during  three  genera- 
tions of  civil  discord,  wavered  in  fidelity  to  his  house, 
abhorred  even  by  that  army  on  which,  in  the  last  ex- 
tremity, he  must  rely. 

His  religion  was  still  under  proscription.  Many  rig- 
orous laws  against  Roman  Catholics  appeared  on  the 
Statute  Book,  and  had,  within  no  long  time,  been  rig- 
orously executed.  The  Test  Act  excluded  from  civil 
and  military  office  all  who  dissented  from  the  Church 
of  England ;  and,  by  a  subsequent  Act,  passed  when  the 
fictions  of  Gates  had  driven  the  nation  wild,  it  had 
been  provided  that  no  person  should  sit  in  either  House 
of  Parliament  without  solemnly  abjuring  the  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation.  That  the  King  should  wish  to 
obtain  for  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged  a  complete 
toleration  was  natural  and  right ;  nor  is  there  any  rea- 
son to  doubt  that,  by  a  little  patience,  prudence,  and 
justice,  such  a  toleration  might  have  been  obtained. 

The  extreme  antipathy  and  dread  with  which  the 
English  people  regarded  his  religion  was  not  to  be  as- 
cribed solely  or  chiefly  to  theological  animosity.  That 
salvation  might  be  found  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  nay, 
that  some  members  of  that  Church  had  been  amon^  the 
brightest  examples  of  Christian  virtue,  was  admitted 
by  all  divines  of  the  Anglican  communion  and  by  the 
most  illustrious  Nonconformists.  It  is  notorious  that 
the  penal  laws  against  Popery  were  strenuously  de- 
fended by  many  who  thought  Arianism,  Quakerism, 
and  Judaism  more  dangerous,  in  a  spiritual  point  of 


1«5.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  279 

view,  than  Popery,  and  who  yet  showed  no  disposition 
to  enact  similar  laws  against  Avians,  Quakers,  or  Jews. 
It  is  easy  to  explain  why  the  Roman  Catholic  was 
treated  with  less  indulo-ence  than  was  shown  to  men 
who  renounced  the  doctrine  of  the  Nicene  fathers,  and 
even  to  men  who  had  not  been  admitted  by  baptism 
within  the  Christian  pale.  There  was  among  the  Eng- 
lish a  strong  conviction  that  the  Roman  Catholic,  where 
the  interests  of  his  relio-ion  were  concerned,  thoucjht 
himself  free  from  all  the  ordinary  rules  of  morality,  nay, 
that  he  thought  it  meritorious  to  violate  those  rules  if, 
by  so  doing,  he  could  avert  injury  or  reproach  from  the 
Church  of  which  he  was  a  member.  Nor  was  this 
opinion  destitute  of  a  show  of  reason.  It  was  impossi- 
ble to  deny  that  Roman  Catholic  casuists  of  great  emi- 
nence had  written  in  defence  of  equivocation,  of  mental 
reservation,  of  perjury,  and  even  of  assassination.  Nor, 
it  was  said,  had  the  speculations  of  this  odious  school  of 
sophists  been  barren  of  results.  The  massacre  of  Saint 
Bartholomew,  the  murder  of  the  first  William  of  Or- 
ange, the  murder  of  Henry  the  Third  of  France,  the 
numerous  conspiracies  which  had  been  formed  against 
the  life  of  Elizabeth,  and,  above  all,  the  gunpowder 
treason,  were  constantly  cited  as  instances  of  the  close 
connection  between  vicious  theory  and  vicious  practice. 
It  was  alleged  that  every  one  of  these  crimes  had  been 
prompted  or  api)lauded  by  Roman  Catholic  divines. 
The  letters  which  Everard  Digby  wrote  in  lemon  juice 
from  the  Tower  to  his  wife  had  recently  been  published, 
and  were  often  quoted.  He  was  a  scholar  and  a  gen- 
tleman, upright  in  all  ordinary  dealings,  and  strongly 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  duty  to  God.  Yet  he  had 
been  deeply  concerned  in  the  plot  for  blowing  up  King, 
Lords,  and  Commons,  and  had,  on  the  brink  of  eternity, 


280  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

declared  that  it  was  incomprehensible  to  him  how  any 
Roman  Catholic  should  think  such  a  design  sinful.  The 
inference  po})ularly  drawn  from  these  things  was  that, 
however  fliir  the  general  character  of  a  Papist  might  be, 
there  was  no  excess  of  fraud  or  cruelty  of  which  he  was 
not  capable  when  the  safety  and  honour  of  his  Church 
were  at  stake. 

The  extraordinary  success  of  the  fables  of  Gates  is 
to  be  chiefly  ascribed  to  the  prevalence  of  this  opinion. 
It  was  to  no  purpose  that  the  accused  Roman  Catholic 
appealed  to  the  integrity,  humanity,  and  loyalty  which 
he  had  shown  through  the  whole  course  of  his  life.  It 
was  to  no  purpose  that  he  called  crowds  of  respectable 
witnesses,  of  his  own  persuasion,  to  contradict  mon- 
strous romances  invented  by  the  most  infamous  of  man- 
kind. It  was  to  no  pur])ose  that,  with  the  halter  round 
his  neck,  he  invoked  on  himself  the  whole  veno;eance  of 
the  God  before  whom,  in  a  few  moments,  he  must  ap- 
pear, if  he  had  been  guilty  of  meditating  any  ill  to  his 
prince  or  to  his  Protestant  fellow  countrymen.  The 
evidence  which  he  produced  in  his  favour  proved  only 
how  little  Popish  oaths  were  worth.  His  very  virtues 
raised  a  presumption  of  his  guilt.  That  he  had  before 
him  death  and  judgment  in  immediate  prospect  only 
made  it  more  likely  that  he  would  deny  what,  without 
injury  to  the  holiest  of  causes,  he  could  not  confess. 
Among  the  unhappy  men  who  were  convicted  of  the 
murder  of  Godfrey  was  one  Protestant  of  no  high  char- 
acter, Henry  Berry.  It  is  a  remai^kable  and  well  at- 
tested circumstance,  that  Berry's  last  words  did  more  to 
shake  the  credit  of  the  plot  than  the  dying  declarations 
of  all  the  pious  and  honourable  Roman  Catholics  who 
underwent  the  same  fate.^ 

1  Burnet,  i.  447. 


l«86.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  281 

It  was  not  only  by  the  ignorant  populace,  it  was  not 
only  by  zealots  in  whom  fanaticism  had  extinguished 
all  reason  and  charity,  that  the  Roman  Catholic  was 
regarded  as  a  man  the  very  tenderness  of  whose  con- 
science might  make  him  a  false  Avitness,  an  incendiary, 
or  a  murderer,  as  a  man  who,  where  his  Church  was 
concerned,  shrank  from  no  atrocity  and  could  be  bound 
by  no  oath.  If  there  were  in  that  age  two  persons  in- 
clined by  their  judgment  and  by  their  temper  to  tol- 
eration, those  persons  were  Tillotson  and  Locke.  Yet 
Tillotson,  whose  indulgence  for  various  kinds  of  schis- 
matics and  heretics  brought  on  him  the  I'eproach  of 
heterodoxy,  told  the  House  of  Commons  from  the  pul- 
pit that  it  was  their  duty  to  make  effectual  provision 
against  the  propagation  of  a  religion  more  mischievous 
that  irreligion  itself,  of  a  religion  which  demanded  from 
its  followers  services  directly  opposed  to  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  morality.  His  temper,  he  truly  said,  was 
prone  to  lenity  ;  but  his  duty  to  the  community  forced 
him  to  be,  in  this  one  instance,  severe.  He  declared 
that,  in  his  judgment.  Pagans  who  had  never  heard 
the  name  of  Christ,  and  who  were  guided  only  by  the 
light  of  nature,  were  more  trustworthy  members  of 
civil  society  than  men  who  had  been  formed  in  the 
schools  of  the  P()])ish  casuists.^  Locke,  in  the  cele- 
brated treatise  in  which  lie  laboured  to  show  that  even 
the  grossest  forms  of  idolatry  ought  not  to  be  prohibited 
under  penal  sanctions,  contended  that  the  Church  which 
taught  men  not  to  kee])  faith  with  heretics  had  no  claim 
to  toleration. 2 

It  is  evident  that,  in  such  circumstances,  the  greatest 

1  Tillotson's  Sermon,  preached  before  the  House  of  Commons,  Nov   i 
1678. 
•  Locke,  First  Letter  on  Toleration. 


282  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

service  which  an  Enghsh  Roman  Catholic  could  render 
to  his  brethren  in  the  faith  was  to  convince  the  public 
that,  whatever  some  too  subtle  theorists  might  have 
written,  whatever  some  rash  men  might,  in  times  of 
violent  excitement,  have  done,  his  Church  did  not  hold 
that  any  end  could  sanctify  means  inconsistent  with 
morality.  And  this  great  service  it  was  in  the  power 
of  James  to  render.  He  was  King.  He  was  more 
powerful  than  any  English  King  had  been  within  the 
memory  of  the  oldest  man.  It  depended  on  him 
whether  the  reproach  which  lay  on  his  religion  should 
be  taken  away  or  should  be  made  permanent. 

Had  he  conformed  to  the  laws,  had  he  kept  his 
promises,  had  he  abstained  from  employing  any  un- 
righteous methods  for  the  propagation  of  his  own  theo- 
logical tenets,  had  he  suspended  the  operation  of  the 
penal  statutes  by  a  large  exercise  of  his  unquestionable 
prerogative  of  mercy,  but,  at  the  same  time,  carefully 
abstained  from  violating  the  civil  or  ecclesiastical  con- 
stitution of  the  realm,  the  feeling  of  his  people  must 
have  undergone  a  rapid  change.  So  conspicuous  an  ex- 
ample of  good  faith  punctiliously  observed  by  a  Popish 
prince  towards  a  Protestant  nation  would  have  quieted 
the  public  apprehensions.  Men  who  saw  that  a  Roman 
Catholic  might  safely  be  suffered  to  direct  the  whole 
executive  administration,  to  command  the  army  and 
navy,  to  convoke  and  dissolve  the  legislature,  to  appoint 
the  Bishops  and  Deans  of  the  Church  of  England,  would 
soon  have  ceased  to  fear  that  any  great  evil  would  arise 
from  allowing  a  Roman  Catholic  to  be  captain  of  a  com- 
pany or  alderman  of  a  borough.  It  is  probable  that, 
in  a  few  years,  the  sect  so  long  detested  by  the  nation 
would,  with  general  applause,  have  been  admitted  to 
office  and  to  Parliament. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  James  should  attempt  to  pro- 


1«M]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  288 

mote  the  interest  of  his  Church  by  violatino-  the  ftin- 
darnental  laws  of  his  kingdom  and  the  solemn  promises 
which  he  had  repeatedly  made  in  the  face  of  the  whole 
world,  it  could  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  charges 
which  it  had  been  the  fashion  to  bring  against  the 
Roman  Catholic  religion  would  be  considered  by  all 
Protestants  as  fully  established.  For,  if  ever  a  Roman 
Catholic  could  be  expected  to  keep  faith  with  heretics, 
James  might  have  been  expected  to  keep  faith  with  the 
Anglican  clergy.  To  them  he  owed  his  crown.  But 
for  their  strenuous  opposition  to  the  Exclusion  Bill  he 
would  have  been  a  banished  man.  He  had  repeatedly 
and  emphatically  acknowledged  the  debt  which  he 
owed  to  them,  and  had  vowed  to  maintain  them  in  all 
their  legal  rights.  If  he  could  not  be  bound  by  ties 
like  these,  it  must  be  evident  that,  where  his  supersti- 
tion was  concerned,  no  tie  of  gratitude  or  of  honour 
could  bind  him.  To  trust  him  would  thenceforth  be 
impossible  ;  and,  if  his  people  could  not  trust  him, 
what  member  of  his  Church  could  they  trust  ?  He 
was  not  supposed  to  be  constitutionally  or  habitually 
treacherous.  To  his  blunt  manner,  and  to  his  want 
of  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  others,  he  owed  a 
much  higher  reputation  for  sincerity  than  he  at  all  de- 
served. His  eulogists  affected  to  call  him  James  the 
Just.  If  then  it  should  appear  that,  in  turning  Papist, 
he  had  also  turned  dissembler  and  promise-breaker, 
what  conclusion  was  likely  to  be  drawn  by  a  nation  al- 
ready disposed  to  believe  that  Popery  had  a  pernicious 
influence  on  the  moral  character  ? 

For  these  I'casons  many  of  the  most  eminent  Roman 
Catholics  of  that  age,  and  among  them  the  violation  of 
Supremo  Pontiff,  were  of  opinion  that  the  "le  I'^st  Act 
interest  of  their  Church  in  our  island  would  be  most 


284  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Oh.  VL 

effectually  promoted  by  a  moderate  and  constitutional 
policy.  But  such  reasoning  had  no  effect  on  the  slow 
understanding  and  imperious  temper  of  James.  In  his 
eao-erness  to  remove  the  disabilities  under  which  the 
professors  of  his  religion  lay,  he  took  a  course  which 
convinced  the  most  enlightened  and  tolerant  Protes- 
tants of  his  time  that  those  disabilities  were  essential  to 
the  safety  of  the  state.  To  his  policy  the  English  Ro- 
man Catholics  owed  three  years  of  lawless  and  insolent 
triumph,  and  a  hundred  and  forty  years  of  subjection 
and  degradation. 

Many  members  of  his  Church  held  commissions  in 
the  newly  raised  regiments.  This  breach  of  the  law  for 
a  time  passed  uncensured  :  for  men  were  not  disposed 
to  note  every  irregularity  which  was  committed  by  a 
King  suddenly  called  upon  to  defend  his  crown  and  his 
life  asainst  rebels.  But  the  danger  was  now  over.  The 
insurgents  had  been  vanquished  and  punished.  Their 
unsuccessful  attempt  had  strengthened  the  government 
which  they  had  hoped  to  overthrow.  Yet  still  James 
continued  to  grant  commissions  to  unqualified  persons  ; 
and  speedily  it  was  announced  that  he  was  determined 
to  be  no  longer  bound  by  the  Test  Act,  that  he  hoped 
to  induce  the  Parliament  to  repeal  that  Act,  but  that, 
if  the  Parliament  proved  refractory,  he  would  not  the 
less  have  his  own  way. 

As  soon  as  this  was  known,  a  deep  murmur,  the  fore- 
Disgniceof  Tunuer  of  a  tempest,  gave  him  warning  that 
Halifax.  ^i-jg  spirit  bcfore  which  his  grandfather,  his 
father,  and  his  brother  had  been  compelled  to  recede, 
though  dormant,  Avas  not  extinct.  Opposition  appeared 
first  in  the  cabinet.  Haliftix  did  not  attempt  to  conceal 
his  diso-ust  and  alarm.  At  the  Council  board  he  cour- 
ag'^ously  gave  utterance  to  those  feelings  which,  as  it 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  285 

soon  appeared,  pervaded  the  whole  nation.  None  of 
his  colleagues  seconded  him  ;  and  the  subject  dropped. 
He  was  summoned  to  tlie  royal  closet,  and  had  two 
lone  conferences  with  his  master.  James  tried  the 
effect  of  comphments  and  blandishments,  but  to  no 
purpose.  Halifax  positively  refused  to  promise  that 
lie  would  give  his  vote  in  the  House  of  Lords  for  the 
repeal  either  of  the  Test  Act  or  of*  the  Habeas  Corpus 
Act. 

Some  of  those  who  were  about  the  King  advised  him 
not,  on  the  eve  of  the  meeting  of  Parliament,  to  drive 
the  most  eloquent  and  accomplished  statesman  of  the 
age  into  opposition.  They  represented  that  Halifax 
loved  the  dignity  of  office,  that,  while  he  continued  to 
be  Lord  President,  it  would  be  hardly  possible  for  him 
to  put  forth  his  whole  strength  against  the  government, 
and  that  to  dismiss  him  from  his  high  post  was  to  eman- 
cipate him  from  all  restraint.  The  King  was  peremp- 
tory. Halifsix  was  informed  that  his  services  were  no 
longer  needed  ;  and  his  name  was  struck  out  of  the 
Council  Book.i 

His  dismission  produced  a  great  sensation  not  only 
in  England,  but  also  at  Paris,  at  Vienna,  and  General  dis- 
at  the  Hague  :  for  it  was  well  known,  that  <'°"^'''- 
he  had  always  laboured  to  counteract  the  influence 
exercised  by  the  court  of  Versailles  on  English  affairs. 
Lewis  expressed  great  pleasure  at  the  news.  The 
ministers  of  the  United  Provinces  and  of  the  House  of 
Austria,  on  the  other  hand,  extolled  the  wisdom  and 
virtue  of  the  discarded  statesman  in  a  manner  which 
gave  great  offence  at  Whitehall.  James  was  particu- 
larly angiy  with  the  secretary  of  the  imperial  legation, 

1  Council  Book.    The  erasure  ia  dated  Oct.  21.  1685.    Burillou,  Oct.  I^. 


286  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

who  did  not  scruple  to  say  that  the  eminent  service 
which  HaKfax  had  performed  in  the  debate  on  the 
Exclusion  Bill  had  been  requited  with  gross  ino-rati- 
tude.i 

It  soon  became  clear  that  Halifax  would  have  many 
followers.  A  portion  of  the  Tories,  with  their  old 
leader,  Danby,  at  their  head,  began  to  hold  Whiggish 
language.  Even  the  prelates  hinted  that  there  was  a 
point  at  which  the  loyalty  due  to  the  prince  must  yield 
to  higher  considerations.  The  discontent  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  army  was  still  more  extraordinary  and  still  more 
formidable.  Already  began  to  appear  the  first  symp- 
toms of  that  feeling  which,  three  years  later,  impelled 
so  many  officers  of  high  rank  to  desert  the  royal  stand- 
ard. Men  who  had  never  before  had  a  scruple  had 
on  a  sudden  become  strangely  scrupulous.  Churcliill 
gentlj^  whispered  that  the  King  was  going  too  far. 
Kirke,  just  returned  from  his  western  butchery,  swore 
to  stand  by  the  Protestant  religion.  Even  if  he  ab- 
jured the  faith  in  which  he  had  been  bred,  he  would 
never,  he  said,  become  a  Papist.  He  was  already  be- 
spoken. If  ever  he  did  apostatize,  he  was  bound  by  a 
solemn  promise  to  the  Emperor  of  Morocco  to  turn 
Mussulman.^ 

While  the  nation,  agitated  by  many  strong  emotions. 
Persecution  lookcd  anxiously  forward  to  the  reassembling 
French  Hu-  of  the  Houscs,  tidings,  which  increased  the 
guenots.        prevailing  excitement,  arrived  from  France. 

The  long  and  heroic  struggle  which  the  Huguenots 
had   maintained  against  the  French  government  had 

1  Barillon,  n^;^'  1685 ;  Lewis  to  Barillon,  ^^7-5; ;  Nov.  _6,. 

2  There  is  a  remarkable  account  of  the  first  appearance  of  the  sympfom* 
of  discontent  among  the  Tories  in  a  letter  of  Halifax  to  Chesterfield,  writ- 
ten Id  October,  1685.    Burnet,  i.  684. 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  287 

been  brought  to  a  final  close  by  the  ability  and  vigour 
of  Richelieu.  That  great  statesman  vanquished  them  ; 
but  he  confirmed  to  them  the  liberty  of  conscience  which 
had  been  bestowed  on  them  by  the  edict  of  Nantes. 
They  were  suffered,  under  some  restraints  of  no  galling 
kind,  to  worship  God  according  to  their  own  ritual, 
and  to  write  in  defence  of  their  own  docti'ine.  They 
were  admissible  to  political  and  militarj'^  employment ; 
nor  did  their  heresy,  during  a  considerable  time,  prac- 
tically impede  their  rise  in  the  world.  Some  of  them 
commanded  the  armies  of  the  state  ;  and  otliers  pre- 
sided over  important  departments  of  the  civil  admin- 
vstration.  At  length  a  change  took  place.  Lewis  the 
Fourteenth  had,  fi'om  an  early  age,  regarded  the  Cal- 
vinists  with  an  aversion  at  once  religious  and  political. 
A.S  a  zealous  Roman  Catholic,  he  detested  their  theo- 
logical dogmas.  As  a  prince  fond  of  arbitrary  power, 
he  detested  those  republican  theories  which  were  inter- 
mingled with  the  Genevese  divinity.  He  gradually 
retrenched  all  the  privileges  which  the  schismatics 
enjoyed.  He  interfered  with  the  education  of  Protes- 
tant children,  confiscated  property  bequeathed  to  Prot- 
estant consistories,  and  on  frivolous  pretexts  shut  up 
Protestant  churches.  The  Protestant  ministers  were 
harassed  by  the  tax  gatherers.  The  Protestant  magis- 
trates were  deprived  of  the  honour  of  nobility.  The 
Protestant  officers  of  the  roj^al  liousehold  were  informed 
that  His  Majesty  dispensed  with  their  services.  Orders 
were  given  tliat  no  Protestant  should  be  admitted  into 
the  legal  professicm.  The  oppressed  sect  showed  some 
faint  signs  of  that  spirit  which  in  the  preceding  century 
had  bidden  defiance  to  the  whole  power  of  the  House 
ofValois.  Massacres  and  executions  followed.  Dra- 
goons were  quartered  in  the  towns  where  the  heretics 

VOL.    II.  19 


288  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cu.  VI 

were  numerous,  and  in  the  country  seats  of  the  heretic 
gentry  ;  and  the  cruelty  and  licentiousness  of  these  rude 
missionaries  was  sanctioned  or  leniently  censured  by 
the  government.  Still,  however,  the  edict  of  Nantes, 
though  practically  violated  in  its  most  essential  pro- 
visions, had  not  been  formally  rescinded  ;  and  the  King 
repeatedly  declared  in  solemn  public  acts  that  he  was 
resolved  to  maintain  it.  But  the  bigots  and  flatterers 
who  had  his  ear  gave  him  advice  which  he  was  but 
too  willing  to  take.  They  represented  to  him  that  his 
rigorous  policy  had  been  eminently  successful,  that 
little  or  no  resistance  had  been  made  to  his  will,  that 
thousands  of  Huguenots  had  already  been  converted, 
that,  if  he  would  take  the  one  decisive  step  which  yet 
remained,  those  who  were  still  obstinate  would  speedily 
submit,  France  would  be  purged  from  the  taint  of 
heresy,  and  her  prince  would  have  earned  a  heavenly 
crown  not  less  gloriovis  than  that  of  Saint  Lewis. 
These  arguments  prevailed.  The  final  blow  was 
struck.  The  edict  of  Nantes  was  revoked ;  and  a 
crowd  of  decrees  against  the  sectaries  appeared  in 
rapid  succession.  Boys  and  girls  were  torn  from  their 
parents  and  sent  to  be  educated  in  convents.  All 
Calvinistic  ministers  were  commanded  either  to  abjure 
their  religion  or  to  quit  their  country  within  a  fortnight. 
The  other  professors  of  the  reformed  faith  were  for- 
bidden to  leave  the  kingdom  ;  and,  in  order  to  prevent 
them  from  making  their  escape,  the  outports  and  fron- 
tiers were  strictly  guarded.  It  was  thought  that  the 
flocks,  thus  separated  from  the  evil  shepherds,  would 
soon  return  to  the  true  fold.  But  in  spite  of  all  the 
vigilance  of  the  military  police  there  was  a  vast  emi- 
gration. It  was  calculated  that,  in  a  few  months, 
fifty  thousand  families  quitted  France  for  ever.     Nor 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  289 

were  the  refugees  sucli  as  a  country  can  well  spare. 
Tliey  were  generally  persons  of  intelligent  minds,  of 
industrious  habits,  and  of  austere  morals.  In  the  list 
are  to  be  found  names  eminent  in  war,  in  science,  in 
literature,  and  in  art.  Some  of  the  exiles  offered  their 
swords  to  William  of  Orano;e,  and  distino-uished  them- 
selves  by  the  fury  with  which  they  fought  against  their 
persecutor.  Others  avenged  themselves  with  weapons 
still  more  formidable,  and,  by  means  of  the  presses 
of  Holland,  England,  and  Germany,  inflamed,  dur- 
ing thirty  years,  the  public  mind  of  Europe  against 
the  French  government.  A  more  peaceful  class  erect- 
ed silk  manufactories  in  the  eastern  suburb  of  Lon- 
don. One  detachment  of  emiirrants  tauirht  the  Sax- 
ons  to  make  the  stuffs  and  hats  of  which  France  had 
hitherto  enjoyed  a  monopoly.  Another  planted  the 
first  vines  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope.^ 

In  ordinary  circumstances  the  courts  of  Spain  and  of 
Rome  would  have  eagerly  applauded  a  prince  who  had 
made  vigorous  war  on  heresy.  But  such  was  the 
hatred  inspired  by  the  injustice  and  haughtiness  of 
Lewis  that,  when  he  became  a  persecutor,  the  courts 
of  Spain  and  Rome  took  the  side  of  religious  liberty, 
and  loudly  reprobated  the  cruelty  of  turning  a  savajre 
and  licentious  soldiery  loose  on  an  mioffending  people.^ 
One  cry  of  grief  and  rage  rose  fi'om  the  whole  of  Prot- 

1  The  contemporaiy  tracts  in  various  lan^uaj^es  on  the  subject  of  this 
|.ersccution  are  iiMHiiiRT.ible.  An  cniineiitly  clear,  terse,  and  spirited  sum- 
mary will  be  found  in  Voltaire's  Siecle  de  Louis  XFV. 

■•'  "  Misionarios  cm()otadoR,'*  says  Ronquillo.  "  Apostoli  armati,"  says 
Innocent.  There  is,  in  the  Mackintosh  Collection,  a  remarkable  letter  on 
this  .subject  from  Ronquillo,  dated  ^'^"^^j  '^'  1686.  See  Venier,  Relatione 
-Ji  Francia,  1689,  quoted  by  Professor  Ranke  in  his  Romischen  Papste 
book  viii. 


290  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Oh.  VI. 

estant  Europe.  The  tidings  of  the  revocation  of  the 
edict  of  Nantes  reached  England  about  a  week  before 
the  day  to  which  the  Parhament  stood  adjourned.  It 
was  clear  then  that  the  spirit  of  Gardiner  and  of  Alva 
was  still  the  s])irit  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
Lewis  was  not  inferior  to  James  in  generosity  and  hu- 
manity, and  was  certainly  far  superior  to  James  in  all 
the  abilities  and  acquirements  of  a  statesman.  Lewis 
had,  like  James,  repeatedly  promised  to  respect  the 
privileges  of  his  Protestant  subjects.  Yet  Lewis  was 
now  avowedly  a  persecutor  of  the  reformed  religion. 
What  reason  was  there,  then,  to  doubt  that  James 
waited  only  for  an  opportunity  to  follow  the  example  ? 
He  was  already  forming,  in  defiance  of  the  law,  a  mili- 
taxy  force  officered  to  a  great  extent  by  Roman  Cath- 
olics. Was  there  anything  unreasonable  in  the  appre- 
hension that  this  force  might  be  employed  to  do  what 
the  French  dragoons  had  done  ? 

James  was  almost  as  much  disturbed  as  his  subjects 
E£fectofthat  by  the  couduct  of  the  court  of  Versailles. 
{^England.  In  truth,  that  court  had  acted  as  if  it  had 
meant  to  embarrass  and  annoy  him.  He  was  about 
to  ask  from  a  Protestant  legislature  a  full  toleration  for 
Roman  Catholics.  Nothing,  therefore,  could  be  more 
unwelcome  to  him  than  the  intelligence  that,  in  a 
neighbouring  country,  toleration  had  just  been  with- 
drawn by  a  Roman  Catholic  government  from  Prot- 
estants. His  vexation  was  increased  by  a  speech  which 
the  Bishop  of  Valence,  in  the  name  of  the  Galilean 
clergy,  addressed  at  this  time  to  Lewis  the  Fourteenth. 
The  pious  Sovereign  of  England,  the  orator  said,  looked 
to  the  most  Clu-istian  King  for  support  against  a  he- 
retical nation.  It  was  remarked  that  the  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons  showed  particular  anxiety  to 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  291 

procure  copies  of  this  harangue,  and  that  it  was  read 
bv  all  Eno;lishmen  with  indiiination  and  alarm. ^  James 
was  desirous  to  counteract  the  impression  which  these 
things  had  made,  and  was  also  at  that  moment  by  no 
means  unwilling  to  let  all  Europe  see  that  he  was  not 
the  slave  of"  France.  He  therefore  declared  publicly 
that  he  disapproved  of  the  manner  in  which  the  Hu- 
guenots had  been  treated,  granted  to  the  exiles  some 
relief  from  his  privy  purse,  and,  by  letters  under  his 
great  seal,  invited  his  subjects  to  imitate  his  liber- 
ality. In  a  very  few  months  it  became  clear  that  all 
this  compassion  was  feigned  for  the  purpose  of  cajol- 
ing his  Parliament,  that  he  regarded  the  refugees 
with  mortal  hatred,  and  that  he  regretted  nothing 
so  much  as  his  oAvn  inability  to  do  what  Lewis  had 
done. 

On  the  ninth  of  November  the  Houses  met.  The 
Commons  were  summoned  to  the  bar  of  the  Meeting  of 
Lords  ;  and  tlu;  King  spoke  from  the  throne.  fp^J'i^tiofthe 
His  speech  had  been  composed  by  himself  ^°^' 
Pie  congratulated  his  loving  subjects  on  the  suppression 
of  the  rebellion  in  the  West:  but  he  added  that  the 
speed  with  which  that  rebellion  had  risen  to  a  formida- 
ble height,  and  the  length  of  time  during  which  it  had 
continued  to  rage,  must  convince  all  men  how  little 
dependence  could  be  placed  on  the  militia.  He  had, 
therelbre,  made  additions  to  the  regular  army.  Plie 
chai'ge  of  that  army  would  henceforth  be  more  than 
double  of  what  it  had  been  ;  and  he  trusted  that  the 
Commons  would  grant  him  the  means  of  defraying  the 
increased  exi)ense.     He  then  informed  his  hearers  that 

1  "  Mi  dicono  die  tiitti  qiicsli  parlamciitarii  iie  hanno  voluto  copia,  il 
che  assolutamente  avrii  causato  pessiine  imprcssioni."  —  Adda,  Nov.  JL. 
1685.     See  Evelyn'a  Diary,  Nov.  3. 


292  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cii    VL 

he  had  employed  some  officers  who  had  not  taken  the 
test ;  but  he  knew  these  officers  to  be  fit  for  pubhc 
trust.  He  feared  that  artful  men  miVht  avail  them- 
selves  of  this  irregularity  to  disturb  the  harmony  which 
existed  between  himself  and  his  Parliament.  But  he 
would  speak  out.  He  was  determined  not  to  part  with 
servants  on  whose  fidelity  he  could  rely,  and  whose  help 
he  might  perhaps  soon  need.^ 

This  explicit  declaration  that  he  had  broken  the  laws 
An  opposition  which  wcrc  regarded  by  the  nation  as  the 
m^^o^ """  chief  safeguards  of  the  established  religion, 
Commons.  j^j^j  ^]-,^^  j-^g  ^^^  rcsolvcd  to  pcrsist  in  break- 
ing those  laws,  was  not  likely  to  sooth  the  excited 
feelings  of  his  subjects.  The  Lords,  seldom  disposed 
to  take  the  lead  in  opposition  to  a  government,  con- 
sented to  vote  him  formal  thanks  for  what  he  had  said. 
But  the  Commons  were  in  a  less  complying  mood. 
When  they  had  returned  to  their  own  House  there 
was  a  long  silence ;  and  the  faces  of  many  of  the  most 
respectable  members  expressed  deep  concern.  At 
length  Middleton  rose  and  moved  the  House  to  go  in- 
stantly into  committee  on  the  King's  speech :  but  Sir 
Edmund  Jennings,  a  zealous  Tory  from  Yorkshire,  who 
was  supposed  to  speak  the  sentiments  of  Danby,  pro- 
tested against  this  course,  and  demanded  time  for  con- 
sideration. Sir  Thomas  Claro-es,  maternal  uncle  of 
the  Duke  of  Albemarle,  and  long  distinguished  in  Par- 
liament as  a  man  of  business  and  a  vigilant  steward  of 
the  public  money,  took  the  same  side.  The  feeling  of 
the  House  could  not  be  mistaken.  Sir  John  Ernley, 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  insisted  that  the  delay 
should  not  exceed  forty-eight  hours  ;  but  he  was  over- 

*  Lords'  Journals,  Nov.  9.  1685.     "  Vengo  assicurato,"  says  Adda,  "  clM 
S.  M.  stessa  abbia  composto  il  discorso."  —  Despatch  of  Nov.  ^.  1686. 


W85.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  293 

ruled ;  and  it  was  resolved  that  the  discussion  should 
be  postponed  for  three  dajs.^ 

The  interval  was  well  employed  by  those  who  took 
the  lead  against  the  court.  They  had  indeed  no  light 
work  to  perform.  In  three  days  a  country  party  was 
to  be  organized.  The  difficulty  of  the  task  is  in  our 
age  not  easily  to  be  appreciated  ;  for  in  our  age  all  the 
nation  assists  at  every  deliberation  of  the  Lords  and 
Commons.  What  is  said  by  the  leaders  of  the  min- 
istry and  of  the  opposition  after  midnight  is  read  by 
the  whole  metropolis  at  dawn,  by  the  inhabitants  of 
Northumberland  and  Cornwall  in  the  afternoon,  and 
in  Ireland  and  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  on  the 
morrow.  In  our  age,  therefore,  the  stages  of  legis- 
lation, the  rules  of  debate,  the  tactics  of  fliction,  the 
opinions,  temper,  and  style  of  every  active  member  of 
either  House,  are  famihar  to  hundreds  of  thousands. 
Every  man  who  now  enters  Parliament  possesses  what, 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  would  have  been  called  a 
great  stock  of  parliamentary  knowledge.  Such  knowl- 
edge was  then  to  be  obtained  only  by  actual  parlia- 
mentary service.  The  difference  between  an  old  and  a 
new  member  Avas  as  great  as  the  difference  between  a 
veteran  soldier  and  a  recruit  just  taken  from  the  plough  ; 
and  James's  Parliament  contained  a  most  unusual  pro- 
portion of  new  members,  who  had  brought  from  their 
country  seats  to  Westminster  no  political  knowledge 
and  many  violent  prejudices.  These  gentlemen  hated 
the  Papists,  but  hated  the  Whigs  not  less  intensely,  and 
regarded  the  King  with  superstitious  veneration.  To 
form  an  opposition  out  of  such  materials  was   a  feat 

1  Commons'  Journals;  Bramston's  Memoirs;  James  Van  Leouwen  to 
ihe  States  General,  Nov.  ^^.  1685.  Van  Leeuwen  was  secretary  of  the 
Dutch  embassy,  and  conducted  the  correspondence  in  the  absence  of  Van 
Citters.     As  to  Clarges,  see  Burnet,  i.  98. 


294  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Cm.  VI 

which  required  the  most  skilful  and  delicate  manage- 
ment. Some  men  of  great  weight,  however,  undertook 
the  work,  and  performed  it  with  success.  Several  ex- 
perienced Whig  politicians,  who  had  not  seats  in  that 
Parliament,  gave  useful  advice  and  information.  On 
the  day  preceding  that  which  had  been  fixed  for  the 
debate,  man^^  meetings  were  held  at  which  the  leaders 
instructed  the  novices  ;  and  it  soon  appeared  that  these 
exertions  had  not  been  thrown  awaj.^ 

The  foreign  embassies  were  all  in  a  ferment.     It  was 
Sentiments     well  uudcrstood  that  a  few  days  would  now 

of  foreign  i       •  i         i  •  i        i  i  • 

governments,  accidc  the  great  question,  whether  the  King 
of  England  was  or  was  not  to  be  the  vassal  of  the  King 
of  France.  The  ministers  of  the  House  of  Austria  were 
most  anxious  that  James  should  give  satisfaction  to  his 
Parliament.  Innocent  had  sent  to  London  two  persons 
charged  to  inculcate  moderation,  both  by  admonition 
and  by  examj)le.  One  of  them  was  John  Leybiirn,  an 
English  Dominican,  who  had  been  secretary  to  Cardinal 
Howard,  and  who,  with  some  learning  and  a  rich  vein 
of  natural  humour,  was  the  most  cautious,  dexterous, 
and  taciturn  of  men.  He  had  recently  been  conse- 
crated Bishop  of  Adrumetum,  and  named  Vicar  Apos- 
tolic in  Great  Britain.  Ferdinand,  Count  of  Adda,  an 
Italian  of  no  eminent  abilities,  but  of  mild  temper  and 
courtly  manners,  had  been  appointed  Nuncio.  These 
functionaries  were  eagerly  welcomed  by  James.  No 
Roman  Catholic  Bishop  had  exercised  spiritual  functions 
in  the  island  during  more  than  half  a  century.  No 
Nuncio  had  been  received  here  durinsi;  the  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  years  which  had  elapsed  since  the  death 
of  Mary.  Ley  burn  was  lodged  in  Whitehall,  and  re- 
ceived a  pension  of  a  thousand  pounds  a  year.     Adda 

1  Barillon,  Nov.  ^.  1685. 


1685.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  295 

did  not  yet  assume  a  public  character.  He  passed  for 
a  foreigner  of  rank  whom  curiosity  had  brought  to  Lon- 
don, appeared  daily  at  court,  and  was  treated  with  high 
consideration.  Both  the  Papal  emissaries  did  their  best 
to  diminish,  as  much  as  possible,  the  odium  iuseparable 
from  the  offices  which  they  filled,  and  to  restrain  the 
rash  zeal  of  James.  The  Nuncio,  in  particular,  declared 
that  nothing  could  be  more  injurious  to  the  interests  of 
the  Church  of  Rome  than  a  rupture  between  the  King 
and  the  Parliament.^ 

Barillon  was  active  on  the  other  side.  The  instruc- 
tions which  he  received  from  Versailles  on  this  occasion 
well  deserve  to  be  studied  ;  for  they  furnish  a  key  to 
the  policy  systematically  pursued  by  his  master  towards 
England  during  the  twenty  years  which  preceded  our 
revolution.  The  advices  from  Madrid,  Lewis  wrote, 
■were  alarming.  Strong  hopes  were  entertained  there 
that  James  would  ally  himself  closely  with  the  House 
of  Austria,  as  soon  as  he  should  be  assured  that  his 
Parliament  would  give  him  no  trouble.  In  these  cir- 
cumstances, it  was  evidently  the  interest  of  France  that 
the  Parliament  should  prove  refractory.  Barillon  was 
therefore  directed  to  act,  with  all  possible  precautions 
against  detection,  the  part  of  a  makebate.  At  court  he 
was  to  omit  no  opportunity  of  stimulating  the  religious 
zeal  and  the  kingly  pride  of  James  ;  but  at  the  same 
time  it  might  be  desirable  to  have  some  secret  connnu- 
nication  with  the  malecontents.     Such  communication 

>■  Dodd's  Church  History,  Van  Leeuwen,  Nov.  11.  1685;  Barillon,  Dec. 
24.  1085.  Barillon  says  of  Adda,  "On  I'avoit  fait  pii'venir  que  lasurett^et 
I'avaiitage  dt's  Catholiqucs  coiisistoient  dans  uiic  ri'iiiiion  entiere  de  sa  Ma- 
jesty Hritannique  et  de  .son  parleinent."  Letters  of  Innocent  to  .James,  dated 
^~-'  and  y!'—  ^''^^'  I'^^spa'^^^'ies  of  Adda,  Nov.  ^^.  and  Nov.  ^g,  1085. 
'lie  very  interesting  correspondence  of  Adda,  copied  from  the  i'apal  ar- 
Uuves,  is  iu  the  British  Museum. 


296  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

would  indeed  be  hazardous  and  would  require  the  ut- 
most adroitness  ;  yet  it  might  perhaps  be  in  the  power 
of  the  Ambassador,  without  committing  himself  or  his 
government,  to  animate  the  zeal  of  the  opposition  for 
the  laws  and  liberties  of  England,  and  to  let  it  be  un- 
derstood that  those  laws  and  liberties  were  not  regarded 
by  his  master  with  an  unfriendly  eye.^ 

Lewis,  when  he  dictated  these  instructions,  did  not 
Committee     forcsce  how  spcedilv  and  how  completely  his 

of  the  Com-  ,  i  i  i  i  i         i  i       • 

nions  on  the    uueasuiess  woulcl  DC  removecl  by  the  obstmacy 

King's  .    . 

speech.  and  stupidity  of  James.     On  the  twelfth  of 

November  the  House  of  Commons  resolved  itself  into  a 
committee  on  the  royal  speech.  The  Solicitor  General, 
Heneage  Finch,  was  in  the  chair.  The  debate  was 
conducted  by  the  chiefs  of  the  new  country  party  with 
rare  tact  and  address.  No  expression  indicating  dis- 
respect to  the  Sovereign  or  sympathy  for  rebels  was 
suffered  to  escape.  The  Western  insurrection  was  al- 
ways mentioned  with  abhorrence.  Nothing  was  said  of 
the  barbarities  of  Kirke  and  Jeffreys.  It  was  admitted 
that  the  heavy  expenditure  which  had  been  occasioned 
by  the  late  troubles  justified  the  King  in  asking  some 
further  supply :  but  strong  objections  were  made  to  the 
augmentation  of  the  army  and  to  the  infraction  of  the 
Test  Act. 

The  subject  of  the  Test  Act  the  courtiers  appear  to 
have  carefully  avoided.  They  harangued,  however, 
with  some  force  on  the  great  superiority  of  a  regular 
army  to  a  militia.  One  of  them  tauntingly  asked 
whether  the  defence  of  the  kingdom  was  to  be  en- 
trusted to  the  beefeaters.  Another  said  that  he  should 
be  glad  to  know  how  the  Devonshire  trainbands,  who 

1  This  most  remarkable  despatch  bears  date  the  ^^th  of  November  1685 
and  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix  to  Mr.  Fox's  History. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  297 

had  iled  in  confusion  before  Monmouth's  scytheinen, 
would  have  faced  the  household  troops  of  Lewis.  But 
these  arguments  had  little  effect  on  Cavaliers  who  still 
remembered  with  bitterness  the  stern  rule  of  the  Pro- 
tector. The  general  feeling  was  forcibly  expressed  bj 
the  first  of  the  Tory  country  gentlemen  of  Encrland, 
Edward  Seymour.  He  admitted  that  the  militia  was 
not  in  a  satisfactory  state,  but  maintained  that  it  might 
be  remodelled.  The  remodelling  might  require  money  ; 
but,  for  his  own  part,  he  would  rather  give  a  million  to 
keep  up  a  force  from  which  he  had  nothing  to  fear,  than 
half  a  million  to  keep  up  a  force  of  which  he  must  ever 
be  afraid.  Let  the  trainbands  be  disciplined ;  let  the 
navy  be  strengthened ;  and  the  country  would  be  se- 
cure. A  standing  army  was  at  best  a  mere  drain  on  the 
public  resources.  The  soldier  was  withdrawn  from  all 
useful  labour.  He  produced  nothing :  he  consumed  the 
fruits  of  the  industry  of  other  men  ;  and  he  domineered 
over  those  by  whom  he  was  supported.  But  the  nation 
was  now  threatened,  not  only  with  a  standing  army, 
but  with  a  Popish  standing  army,  with  a  standing  army 
officered  by  men  who  might  be  very  amiable  and  lion 
ourable,  but  who  were  on  principle  enemies  to  the 
constitution  of  the  realm.  Sir  William  Twisden,  mem- 
ber for  the  county  of  Kent,  spoke  on  the  same  side 
with  great  keenness  and  loud  applause.  Sir  Richard 
Tem|)le,  one  of  the  few  Whigs  who  had  a  seat  in  that 
Parliament,  dexterously  accommodating  his  speech  to 
the  temper  of  his  audience,  reminded  the  House  that  a 
standing  army  had  been  found,  by  experience,  to  be  as 
dangerous  to  the  just  authority  of  princes  as  to  the 
Aberty  of  nations.  Sir  John  ^laynard,  the  most  learned 
lawyer  of  his  time,  took  part  in  the  debate.  He  was 
now  mor-r    than  eighty  years  old,  and  could  well  re- 


298  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  TL 

member  tlie  political  contests  of  the  reign  of  James  the 
First.  He  had  sate  in  the  Long  Parliament,  and  had 
taken  part  with  the  Roundheads,  hut  had  always  been 
for  lenient  counsels,  and  had  laboured  to  brine;  about 
a  general  reconciliation.  His  abilities,  which  ao-e  had 
not  impaired,  and  his  professional  knowledge,  which  had 
long  overawed  all  Westminster  Hall,  commanded  the 
ear  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He,  too,  declared  him- 
self against  the  augmentation  of  the  regular  forces. 

After  much  debate,  it  was  resolved  that  a  supply 
should  be  granted  to  the  crown  ;  but  it  was  also  re- 
solved that  a  bill  should  be  brought  in  for  makino-  the 
militia  more  efficient.  This  last  resolution  was  tanta- 
mount to  a  declaration  against  the  standing  army.  The 
King  was  greatly  displeased  ;  and  it  was  whispered  that, 
if  things  went  on  thus,  the  session  would  not  be  of  long 
duration.^ 

On  the  morrow  the  contention  was  renewed.  The 
language  of  the  country  party  was  perceptibly  bolder 
and  sharper  than  on  the  preceding  day.  That  para- 
graph of  the  King's  speech  which  related  to  supply  pre- 
ceded the  paragraph  which  related  to  the  test.  On  this 
ground  Middleton  proposed  that  the  paragraph  relating 
to  supply  should  be  first  considered  in  committee.    The 

1  Commons'  Journals,  Nov.  12. 1685;  Van  Leeuwen,  Nov.  1|-. ;  Barillon, 
Nov.  1^. ;  Sir  Jolin  Braniston's  Memoirs.  The  best  report  of  the  debates  of 
the  Commons  in  November,  1685,  is  one  of  which  the  historj'-  is  somewhat 
curious.  There  are  two  manuscript  copies  of  it  in  the  British  Museum,  Harl. 
7187. ;  Lans.  253.  In  these  copies  the  names  of  the  speakers  are  given  at 
length.  The  author  of  the  Life  of  James  published  in  1702  transcribed 
this  report,  but  gave  only  the  initials  of  the  speakers.  The  editors  of  Chand- 
ler's Debates  and  of  the  Parliamentary  History  guessed  from  these  initials 
at  the  names,  and  sometimes  guessed  wrong.  They  ascribe  to  Waller  a 
very  remarkable  speech,  which  will  hereafter  be  mentioned,  and  which  was 
really  made  by  Windham,  member  for  Salisbury.  It  was  with  some  con- 
cern that  I  found  myself  forced  to  give  up  the  belief  that  the  last  words  ut« 
tered  in  public  by  Waller  were  so  honourable  to  him. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  299 

opposition  moved  the  previous  question.  They  con- 
tended that  the  reasonable  and  constitutional  practice 
was  to  grant  no  money  till  grievances  had  been  re- 
dressed, and  that  thei'e  would  be  an  end  of  this  practice 
if  the  House  thought  itself  bound  servileh-  to  follow  the 
order  in  which  matters  were  mentioned  by  the  King 
from  the  throne. 

The  division  was  taken  on  the  question  whether 
Middleton's  motion  should  be  put.  The  Noes  were 
ordered  by  the  Speaker  to  go  forth  into  the  lobby. 
They  resented  this  much,  and  complained  loudly  of  his 
servility  and  partiality  :  for  they  conceived  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  intricate  and  subtle  rule  which  was  then  in 
force,  and  which,  in  our  time,  was  superseded  by  a 
more  rational  and  convenient  practice,  they  were  en- 
titled to  keep  their  seats ;  and  it  was  held  by  all  the 
parliamentary  tacticians  of  that  age  that  the  party 
which  staved  in  the  House  had  an  advantao;e  over  the 
party  which  went  oxxt ;  for  the  accommodation  on  the 
benches  was  then  so  deficient  that  no  person  who  had 
been  fortunate  enoufrh  to  get  a  o-ood  seat  was  willinii  to 
lose  it.  Nevertheless,  to  the  dismay  of  the  ministers, 
many  persons  on  whose  votes  the  court  had  absolutely 
depended  were  seen  moving  towards  the  door.  Among 
them  was  Charles  Fox,  Paymaster  of  the  Forces,  and 
son  of  Sir  Stephen  Fox,  Clerk  of  the  Green  Cloth. 
The  Paymaster  had  been  induced  by  his  friends  to 
absent  himself  during  part  of  the  discussion.  But  his 
anxiety  had  become  insupportable.  He  came  down  to 
the  Speaker's  chamber,  heard  part  of  the  debate,  with- 
drew, and,  after  hesitating  for  an  hour  or  two  between 
conscience  and  five  thousand  pounds  a  year,  took  a 
manly  resolution  and  rushed  into  the  House  just  in 
time  to  vote.     Two  officers  of  the  army,  Colonel  John 


SOO  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cw.  VI. 

Darcy,  son  of  the  Lord  Conyers,  and  Captain  James 
Kendall,  withdrew  to  the  lobby.  Middleton  went 
down  to  the  bar  and  ex])ostulated  warmly  with  them. 
He  particularly  addressed  himself  to  Kendall,  a  needy 
retainer  of  the  court,  who  had,  in  obedience  to  the 
royal  mandate,  been  sent  to  Parhament  by  a  packed 
corporation  in  Cornwall,  and  who  had  recently  obtamed 
a  grant  of  a  hundred  head  of  rebels  sentenced  to  trans- 
portation. "Sir,"  said  Middleton,  "have  not  you  a 
troop  of  horse  in  His  Majesty's  service  ?  "  "  Yes,  my 
Lord,"  answered  Kendall :  "  but  my  elder  brother  is 
just  dead,  and  has  left  me  seven  hundred  a  year." 

When  the  tellers  had  done  their  office  it  appeared 
Defeat  of  the  tluxt  the  Aycs  wcre  one  hundred  and  eighty- 
government.  ^^^^^  ^^^^  ^j^^  Noes  ouc  hundred  and  eighty- 
three.  In  that  House  of  Commons  which  had  been 
brought  together  by  the  unscrupulous  use  of  chicanery, 
of  corruption,  and  of  violence,  in  that  House  of  Com- 
mons of  which  James  had  said  that  more  than  eleven 
twelfths  of  the  members  were  such  as  he  would  him- 
self have  nominated,  the  court  had  sustained  a  defeat 
on  a  vital  question.^ 

In  consequence  of  this  vote  the  expressions  which  the 
King  had  used  respecting  the  test  were  taken  into  con- 
sideration. It  was  resolved,  after  much  discussion, 
tluit  an  address  should  be  presented  to  him,  reminding 
him  that  he  could  not  legally  continue  to  employ  offi- 
cers who  refused  to  quality,  and  pressing  him  to  give 
snch  directions  as  might  quiet  the  apprehensions  and 
jealousies  of  his  people.^ 

1  Commons'  Journals,  Nor.  13.  1G85;  Bramston's  Memoirs;  Reresby's 
]\ri'moirs;  Barilkm,  Nov.  ^|.;  Van  Leeuwen,  Nov.  1|. ;  Meinoir.s  of  Sir 
Sli-|)lien  Vox,  1717;  The  Case  of  the  Church  of  England  iairl\'  stated, 
Burnet,  i.  666.  and  Speaker  Onslow's  note. 

2  Commons'  Journals,  Nov.  1C85;  Harl.  MS.  7187.;  Lans.  MS.  253. 


l«86.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  301 

A  motion  was  tlien  made  that  the  Lords  should  be 
requested  to  join  in  the  address.  Whether  this  motion 
was  honestly  made  by  the  opposition,  in  the  hope  that 
the  concurrence  of  the  peers  would  add  weight  to  the 
remonstrance,  or  artfully  made  by  the  courtiers,  in  the 
hope  that  a  breach  between  the  Houses  might  be  the 
consequence,  it  is  now  impossible  to  discover.  The 
proposition  was  rejected.^ 

The  House  then  resolved  itself  into  a  committee,  for 
the  purpose  of  considering  the  amount  of  supply  to  be 
granted.  The  King  wanted  fourteen  hundred  thousand 
pounds :  but  the  ministers  saw  that  it  would  be  vain 
to  ask  for  so  large  a  sum.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer mentioned  twelve  hundred  thousand  pounds. 
The  chiefs  of  the  opposition  replied  that  to  vote  for 
such  a  grant  would  be  to  vote  for  the  permanence  of 
the  present  military  establishment :  they  were  disposed 
to  give  only  so  much  as  might  suffice  to  keep  the 
regular  troops  on  foot  till  the  militia  could  be  remod- 
elled ;  and  they  therefore  proposed  four  hundred  thou- 
sand  pounds.      The   courtiers   exclaimed    against  this 

1  The  conflict  of  testimony  on  this  subject  is  most  extraordinary;  and,  af- 
ter long  consideration,  I  must  own  tiiat  the  balance  seems  to  me  to  be  exact- 
ly poised.  In  the  Life  of  James  (1702),  the  motion  is  represented  as  a  court 
motion.  This  account  is  confirmed  hy  a  remarkable  passap;e  in  tlic  Stuart 
Papers,  which  was  corrected  by  the  Pretender  himself.  (Clarke's  Life  of 
.Tames  the  Second,  ii.  55.)  On  the  otlier  hand,  Reresby,  who  was  present, 
and  Harillon,  who  oujjht  to  have  be(;n  well  informed,  represent  the  motion 
as  an  opposition  motion.  The  Ilarleian  and  Lansdowne  manuscripts  dilTi'r 
in  the  sinfjle  word  on  which  the  wliole  depends.  Unfortunately  Bramston 
was  not  at  the  House  that  day.  James  Van  Leeuwen  mentions  the  motion 
and  the  division,  but  does  not  aild  a  word  which  can  throw  the  smallest 
lij^ht  on  the  state  of  parties.  I  must  own  myself  unable  to  draw  with  cim- 
fidence  any  inference  from  the  mimes  9f  the  tellers.  Sir  Joseph  Williamson 
and  Sir  Francis  Rus.sell  for  the  majority,  and  Lord  Ancram  and  Sir  Henry 
(toodricke  for  the  minority.  I  siiould  have  thonj^ht  Lord  .\ncram  likely 
to  po  with  the  court,  and  Sir  Henry  Goodricke  likely  to  go  with  the  opiw- 
sition. 


302  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Cn.  VT 

motion  as  unworthy  of  the  House  and  disrespectful  to 
the  King;:  but  thev  were  manfullv  encountered.  One 
of  the  western  members,  John  Windham,  wlio  sate 
for  Sahsbury,  especially  distinguished  himself.  He  had 
always,  he  said,  looked  with  dread  and  aversion  on 
standing,  armies ;  and  recent  experience  had  strength- 
ened those  feelino-s.  He  then  ventured  to  touch  on  a 
theme  which  had  hitherto  been  studiously  avoided. 
He  described  the  desolation  of  the  western  counties. 
The  people,  he  said,  were  weary  of  the  oppression  of 
the  troops,  weary  of  free  quarters,  of  depredations,  of 
still  fouler  crimes  which  the  law  called  felonies,  but 
for  which,  when  perpetrated  by  this  class  of  felons,  no 
redress  could  be  obtained.  The  King's  servants  had 
indeed  told  the  House  that  excellent  lailes  had  been 
laid  down  for  the  government  of  the  army  ;  but  none 
could  venture  to  say  that  these  rules  had  been  ob- 
served. What,  then,  was  the  inevitable  inference? 
Did  not  the  contrast  between  the  paternal  injunctions 
issued  from  the  throne  and  the  insupportable  tyranny 
of  the  soldiers  prove  that  the  army  was  even  now  too 
strong  for  the  prince  as  well  as  for  the  people  ?  The 
Commons  might  surely,  with  perfect  consistency,  while 
they  reposed  entire  confidence  in  the  intentions  of  His 
Majesty,  refuse  to  make  any  addition  to  a  force  which 
it  was  clear  that  His  Majesty  could  not  manage. 

The  motion  that  the  sum  to  be  granted  should  not 
Second  de-  cxcced  four  hundred  thousand  pounds,  was 
government,  lost  by  twelvc  votcs.  This  victory  of  the 
ministers  was  little  better  than  a  defeat.  The  leaders 
of  the  country  party,  nothing  disheartened,  retreated 
a  little,  made  another  stand,  and  proposed  the  sum 
of  seven  hundred  thousand  pounds.  The  committee 
divided  again,  and  the  courtiers  were  beaten  by  two 


1688.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  303 

hundred  and  twelve   votes  to  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty.^ 

On  the  following  day  the  Commons  went  in  pro- 
cession to  Whitehall  with  their  address  on  The  King 
the  subject  of  the  test.  The  King  receiv-  IZ!^^^ 
ed  them  on  his  throne.  The  address  was  ™°°®" 
drawn  up  in  respectful  and  affectionate  language  ; 
for  the  great  majority  of  those  who  had  voted  for  it 
were  zealously  and  even  superstitiously  loyal,  and  had 
readily  agreed  to  insert  some  complimentary  phrases, 
and  to  omit  every  word  which  the  courtiers  thought 
offensive.  The  answer  of  James  was  a  cold  and  sullen 
reprimand.  He  declared  himself  greatly  displeased 
and  amazed  that  the  Commons  should  have  profited  so 
little  by  the  admonition  which  he  had  given  them. 
"  But,"  said  he,  "  however  you  may  proceed  on  your 
part,  I  will  be  very  steady  in  all  the  promises  which  I 
have  made  to  you."  ^ 

The  Commons  reassembled  in  their  chamber,  dis- 
contented, yet  somewhat  overawed.  To  most  of  them 
the  King  was  still  an  object  of  filial  reverence.  Three 
moi'e  years  iilled  with  bitter  injuries,  and  with  not  less 
bitter  insults,  were  scarcely  sufficient  to  dissolve  the 
ties  which  hound  the  Cavalier  gentry  to  the  throne. 

The  Speaker  repeated  the  substance  of  the  King's 
reply.  There  was,  for  some  time,  a  solemn  stillness  ; 
then  the  order  of  the  day  was  read  in  regular  course  ; 
and  the  House  wont  into  committee  on  the  bill  for  re- 
modelliu":  the  militia. 

In  a  few  hours,  however,  the  spirit  of  the  opposition 
revived.     When,  at  the  close  of  the  day,  the  Speaker 

»  Commons'  Jonrnala,  Nov.  16.  1085;  Ilarl.  MS.  7187.;  Lans.  MS.  236. 
«  Commons'  Journals,  Nov.  17,  13.  1685. 
vol,.  II.  20 


304  HISTORY    OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

resumed  the  chair,  Wharton,  tlie  boldest  and  most 
Coke  com-  active  of  the  Whigs,  proposed  that  a  time 
Se  Com-  should  bo  appointed  for  taking  His  Majesty's 
respecMo'"'  <i"swer  ijito  Consideration.  John  Coke,  mem- 
theKing.  j^^.j.  f^j,  Derby,  though  a  noted  Tory,  sec- 
onded W^harton.  "  I  hope,"  he  said,  "that  we  are  all 
Englishmen,  and  that  we  shall  not  be  frightened  from 
our  duty  by  a  few  high  words." 

It  was  manfully,  but  not  wisely,  spoken.  The  whole 
House  was  in  a  tempest.  "  Take  down  his  words," 
"  To  the  bar,"  "  To  the  Tower,"  resounded  from 
every  side.  Those  who  were  most  lenient  proposed 
that  the  offender  should  be  repx'imanded :  but  the  min- 
isters vehemently  insisted  that  he  should  be  sent  to 
prison.  The  House  might  pardon,  they  said,  offences 
committed  against  itself,  but  had  no  I'ight  to  pardon 
an  insult  offered  to  the  crown.  Coke  was  sent  to  the 
Tower.  The  indiscretion  of  one  man  had  deranged 
the  whole  system  of  tactics  which  had  been  so  ably 
concerted  by  the  chiefs  of  the  opposition.  It  was  in 
vain  that,  at  that  moment,  Edward  Seymour  attempted 
to  rally  his  followers,  exhorted  them  to  fix  a  day  for 
discussing  the  King's  answer,  and  expressed  his  confi- 
dence that  the  discussion  would  be  conducted  with  the 
respect  due  from  subjects  to  the  sovereign.  The  mem- 
bers were  so  much  cowed  by  the  royal  displeasure,  and 
so  much  incensed  by  the  rudeness  of  Coke,  that  it 
would  not  have  been  safe  to  divide.^ 

The  House  adjourned ;  and  the  ministers  flattered 
themselves  that  the  spirit  of  opposition  was  quelled. 
But  on  the  morrow,  the  nineteenth  of  November,  new 
and  alarming  symptoms  appeared.     The  time  had  ar- 

1  Commons'  Journals,  Nov.  18.  1685;  Harl.  MS.  7187.;  Lans.  MS.  253.; 
Bumet,  i.  667. 


1685.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  305 

rived  for  taking  into  consideration  the  petitions  which 
had  been  presented  from  all  parts  of  England  against 
the  late  elections.  When,  on  the  first  meetino;  of  the 
Parliament,  Seymour  had  complained  of  the  force  and 
fraud  by  which  the  government  had  prevented  the 
sense  of  constituent  bodies  from  being  fairly  taken,  he 
had  found  no  seconder.  But  many  who  had  then 
flinched  from  his  side  had  subsequently  taken  heart, 
and,  with  Sir  John  Lowther,  member  for  Cumberland, 
at  their  head,  had,  before  the  recess,  suggested  that 
there  ought  to  be  an  inquiry  into  the  abuses  which  had 
so  much  excited  the  public  mind.  The  House  was 
now  in  a  much  more  angry  temper;  and  many  voices 
were  boldly  raised  in  menace  and  accusation.  The 
ministers  were  told  that  the  nation  expected,  and  should 
have,  signal  redress.  Meanwhile  it  was  dexterously 
intimated  that  the  best  atonement  which  a  gentleman 
who  had  been  brought  into  the  House  by  irregular 
means  could  make  to  the  public  was  to  use  his  ill  ac- 
quired power  in  defence  of  the  religion  and  liberties 
of  his  country.  No  member  who,  in  that  crisis,  did 
his  duty  had  anything  to  fear.  It  might  be  necessary 
to  unseat  him  ;  but  the  whole  influence  of  the  opposi- 
tion should  be  employed  to  procure  his  reelection.^ 

On  the  same  day  it  became  clear  that  the  spirit  of 
opposition  had  spread  from  the  Commons  to  opposition 
the  Lords,  and  even  to  the  episcopal  bench.   ^„'n,entln 
William  Cavendish,  Earl  of  Devonshire,  took  ThVi"aH^of 
the  lead  in  the  Upper  House  ;  and  he  was   »«^""«'"-^«- 

1  Lonsdale'fe  Memoirs.  Burnet  tells  us  (i.  667.)  that  a  sharp  debate  about 
eWctions  took  jvlai'e  in  tho  House  of  Commons  aller  Coke's  committal. 
It  must  thcrefoic  liave  bi'en  on  the  19th  of  November;  for  Coke  was  roni- 
mitti-d  late  on  the  18ih,  and  the  I'arliament  was  prorofjued  on  the  20th. 
Burnet's  narrative  is  coiilirmed  by  the  Journals,  from  whiclj  it  appears 
that  several  eWctions  were  under  discussion  on  the  lOth. 


306  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

well  qualified  to  do  so.  Tn  wealth  and  influence  he 
was  second  to  none  of  the  English  nobles  ;  and  the 
general  voice  designated  him  as  the  finest  gentleman 
of  his  time.  His  magnificence,  his  taste,  his  talents, 
his  classical  learning,  his  high  spirit,  the  grace  and  ur- 
banity of  his  manners,  were  admitted  by  his  enemies. 
His  eulogists,  unhappily,  could  not  pretend  that  his 
morals  had  escaped  untainted  from  the  widespread  con- 
tagion of  that  age.  Though  an  enemy  of  Popery  and 
of  arbitrary  power,  he  had  been  averse  to  extreme 
courses,  had  been  willing,  when  the  Exclusion  Bill 
was  lost,  to  agree  to  a  compromise,  and  had  never  been 
concerned  in  the  illegal  and  imprudent  schemes  which 
had  brought  discredit  on  the  Whig  party.  But,  while 
blaming  part  of  the  conduct  of  his  friends,  he  had  not 
failed  to  perform  zealously  the  most  arduous  and  peril- 
ous duties  of  friendship.  He  had  stood  near  Russell 
at  the  bar,  had  parted  from  him  on  the  sad  morning 
of  the  execution  with  close  embraces  and  with  many 
bitter  tears,  nay,  had  offered  to  manage  an  escajie  at 
the  hazard  of  his  own  life.^  This  great  nobleman 
now  proposed  that  a  day  should  be  fixed  for  consid- 
ering the  royal  speech.  It  was  contended,  on  the 
other  side,  that  the  Lords,  by  voting  thanks  for  the 
speech,  had  precluded  themselves  from  complaining  of 
it.  But  this  objection  was  treated  with  contempt  by 
Halifax.  "  Such  thanks,"  he  said  with  the  sarcastic 
pleasantry  in  which  he  excelled,  "  imply  no  approba- 
ti(m.  We  are  thankful  whenever  our  gracious  Sover- 
eign deigns  to  speak  to  us.  Especially  thankful  are 
we  when,  as  on  the  present  occasion,  he  speaks  out, 

1  Burnet,  i.  560.;  Funeral  Sermon  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  preached 
by  Kennet,  1708;  Travels  of  Cosmo  III.  in  England;   The  Hazard  of  a 

Death-bed  Repentance  argued  from  the  Remorse  of  Conscience  of  W , 

late  U of  I) ,  when  dvint;;,  a  most  absurd  pamphlet  by  John  Dufi- 

toii  \\hich  reached  a  tenth  edition. 


Ifia5.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  307 

t 

and  ffives  us  fair  Avarnino;  of  what  wc  are  to  siif- 
fer."  1  Doctor  Henry  Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  spoke 
strongly  for  the  motion.  Though  not  gffted  The  Bishop 
with  eminent  abihties,  nor  deeply  versed  in  the 
learning  of  his  profession,  he  was  always  heard  by  the 
House  with  respect ;  for  he  was  one  of  the  few  clergy- 
men who  could,  in  that  age,  boast  of  noble  blood.  His 
own  loyalty,  and  the  loyalty  of  his  family,  had  been 
signally  proved.  His  father,  the  second  Earl  of  North- 
ampton, had  fought  bravely  for  King  Charles  the  First, 
and,  surrounded  by  the  parliamentary  soldiers,  had 
fallen,  sword  in  hand,  refusing  to  give  or  take  quarter. 
The  Bishop  himself,  before  he  was  ordained,  had  borne 
arms  in  the  Guards ;  and,  though  he  generally  did  his 
best  to  preserve  the  gravity  and  sobriety  befitting  a 
prelate,  some  flashes  of  his  mihtary  spirit  would,  to  the 
last,  occasionally  break  forth.  He  had  been  entrusted 
with  the  relio-ious  education  of  the  two  Princesses,  and 
had  acquitted  himself  of  that  important  duty  in  a  man- 
ner which  had  satisfied  all  good  Protestants,  and  had 
secured  to  him  considerable  influence  over  the  minds  of 
his  pupils,  especially  of  the  Lady  Anne.^  He  now  de- 
clared that  he  was  empowered  to  speak  the  sense  of  his 
brethren,  and  that,  in  their  opinion  and  in  his  own,  the 
whole  civil  and  ecclesiastical  constitution  of  the  realm 
was  in  danger. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  speeches  of  that  day 
was  made  by  a  young  man,  Avhose  eccentric  viscom.t 
career  was  destined  to  amaze  Europe.     This   ""•■''•'"»'■ 
was  Charles  Mordaunt,  Viscount  jNIordaunt,  widely  re- 
nowned, many  yeai-s  later,  as   Earl  of  Peterborough. 

1  Bramston's  Memoirs.  liuniet  is  iiicorroct  ixith  as  to  the  time  when  the 
remark  was  iiinde  and  ;is  tn  the  (lerson  who  made  it.  In  Ilalil'a.x's  Letter 
to  a  Dissenter  will  be  found  a  roniarlcablc  allusion  to  this  discussion. 

'  Wood,  Ath.  Ox. ;  Gooch's  Funeral  Sermon  on  Bishop  Compton 


308  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

t 

Already  lie  had  given  abundant  proofs  of  liis  courage, 
of  his  capacity,  and  of  that  strange  unsoundness  of  mind 
which  made  his  courage  and  capacity  almost  useless  to 
his  country.  Already  he  had  distinguished  himself 
as  a  wit  and  a  scliohxr,  as  a  soldier  and  a  sailor.  He 
had  even  set  his  heart  on  rivalling  Bourdaloue  and 
Bossuet.  Though  an  avowed  freethinker,  he  had  sate 
up  all  night  at  sea  to  compose  sei-mons,  and  had  with 
great  difficulty  been  prevented  from  edifying  the  crew 
of  a  man  of  war  with  his  pious  oratory.'  He  now  ad- 
dressed the  House  of  Peers,  for  the  first  time,  with 
characteristic  eloquence,  sprightliness,  and  audacity. 
He  blamed  the  Commons  for  not  having  taken  a  bolder 
line.  "  They  have  been  afraid,"  he  said,  "  to  speak 
out.  They  have  talked  of  apprehensions  and  jealousies. 
What  have  apprehension  and  jealousy  to  do  here  ?  Ap- 
prehension and  jealousy  are  the  feelings  with  which  we 
regard  future  and  uncertain  evils.  The  evil  which  we 
are  considering  is  neither  future  nor  uncertain.  A 
standing  army  exists.  It  is  officered  by  Papists.  We 
have  no  foreign  enemy.  There  is  no  rebelUon  in  the 
land.  For  what,  then,  is  this  force  maintained,  except 
for  the  purpose  of  subverting  our  laws  and  establishing 
that  arbitrary  power  which  is  so  justly  abhorred  by 
Englishmen  ?"^ 

1  Teonge's  Diary. 

2  Barillon  has  given  the  best  account  of  this  debate.  I  will  extract  his 
report  of  Mordaunt's  speech.  "  Milord  Mordaunt,  quoique  jeune,  pnrla 
avec  Eloquence  et  force.  II  dit  que  la  question  n'c'toit  pas  r^duite,  comme 
la  Chambre  des  Communes  le  prtiteiidoit,  a  guerir  des  jalousies  et  defiances, 
qui  avoieiit  lieu  dans  les  choses  incertaines;  mais  que  ce  qui  ce   passoit 

e  r^toit  pas,  qn'il  y  avoit  une  annee  sur  pied  qui  subsistoit,  et  qui 
etoit  remplie  d'otticiers  Catholiques,  qui  ne  pouvoit  etre  conserv^e  que 
pour  le  renversement  des  loix,  et  que  la  subsistance  de  Tarmee,  quand 
il  n'y  a  aucune  guerre  ni  au  dedans  ni  au  dehors,  (5toit  I'cJtablissement 
du  gouvernement  arbitraire,  pour  lequel  les  Anglois  out  une  aversion  <u 
bien  fondee." 


1885.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  309 

Jeffi'eys  spoke  against  the  motion  in  the  coarse  and 
savage  style  of  which  he  was  a  master ;  but  he  soon 
found  that  it  was  not  quite  so  easy  to  browbeat  the 
proud  and  powerful  barons  of  England  in  their  own 
hall,  as  to  intimidate  advocates  whose  bread  depended 
on  his  favour  or  prisoners  whose  necks  were  at  liis 
mercy.  A  man  whose  life  had  been  passed  in  attack- 
ing and  domineering,  whatever  may  be  his  talents  and 
courage,  generally  makes  a  poor  figure  when  he  is 
vigorously  assailed :  for,  being  unaccustomed  to  stand 
on  the  defensive,  he  becomes  confused ;  and  the  knowl- 
edge that  all  those  whom  he  has  insulted  are  enjoying 
his  confusion  confuses  him  still  more.  Jeffreys  was 
now,  for  the  first  time  since  he  had  become  a  great 
man,  encountered  on  equal  terms  by  adversaries  who 
did  not  fear  him.  To  the  general  delight,  he  passed 
at  once  from  the  extreme  of  insolence  to  the  extreme 
of  meanness,  and  could  not  refrain  from  weeping  with 
rage  and  vexation.^  Nothing  indeed  was  wanting  to 
his  humiliation ;  for  the  House  was  crowded  by  about 
a  hundred  peers,  a  larger  nimiber  than  had  voted  even 
on  the  great  day  of  the  Exclusion  Bill.  The  King,  too, 
was  present.  His  brother  had  been  in  the  habit  of  at- 
tending the  sittings  of  the  Lords  for  amusement,  and 
used  often  to  say  that  a  debate  was  as  entertaining  as 
a  comedy.  James  came,  not  to  be  diverted,  but  in  the 
hope  that  his  presence  might  impose  some  restraint  on 
the  discussion.  He  was  disappointed.  The  sense  of 
the  House  was  so  strongly  manifested  that,  after  a  clos- 

1  He  was  ven'  easily  moved  to  tears.  "  He  could  not,"  saj's  the  author 
of  the  Panet:3Tic,  "  rel'niin  from  weeping  on  bold  aH'roiits."  And  again: 
'•  They  talk  of  his  hectoring  and  proud  carriage;  what  could  he  more  hum- 
ble than  for  a  man  in  his  great  post  to  crj-  and  sob?"  In  the  answer  to 
the  Panegyric  it  is  said  that  "  his  having  no  command  of  his  tears  spoiled 
bim  for  a  hypocrite." 


810  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

ing  speech,  of  great  keenness,  from  Halifax,  tlie  courtiers 
did  not  venture  to  divide.  An  early  day  was  fixed  for 
taking  the  royal  speech  into  consideration  ;  and  it  was 
ordered  that  every  peer  who  was  in  or  near  the  capital 
should  be  in  his  place. ^ 

On  the  following  morning  the  King  came  down,  in 
his  robes,  to  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Usher 
of  the  Black  Rod  summoned  the  Commons 
to  the  bar ;  and  the  Chancellor  announced  that  the 
Parliament  was  prorogued  to  the  tenth  of  February.^ 
The  members  who  had  voted  a2:ainst  the  court  were 
dismissed  from  the  public  service.  Charles  Fox  quitted 
the  Pay  Office.  The  Bishop  of  London  ceased  to  be 
Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal,  and  his  name  was  struck 
out  of  the  list  of  Privy  Councillors. 

The  effect  of  the  prorogation  was  to  put  an  end  to 
a  legal  proceeding  of  the  highest  importance.  Thomas 
Grey,  Earl  of  Stamford,  sprung  from  one  of  the  most 
illustrious  houses  of  England,  had  been  recently  ar- 
rested and  committed  close  prisoner  to  the  Tower  on  a 
charge  of  high  treason.  He  was  accused  of  having 
been  concerned  in  the  Rye  House  Plot.  A  true  bill 
had  been  found  against  him  by  the  grand  jury  of  the 
City  of  London,  and  had  been  removed  into  the  House 
of  Lords,  the  only  court  before  which  a  temporal  peer 
can,  during  a  session  of  Parliament,  be  arraigned  for 
any  offence  higher  than  a  misdemeanour.  Tiie  first  of 
December  had  been  fixed  for  the  trial ;  and  orders  had 

1  Lords'  Journals,  Nov.  19.  1685;  Barillon,  ^°'''^-.;  Dutch  Despatch, 
Nov.  f^. ;  Luttrell's  Diary,  Nov.  19.;  Burnet,  i.  665.  The  closing  speech 
of  Halifax  is  mentioned  by  the  Nuncio  in  his  despatch  of  Nov.  il.  Adda, 
about  a  month  later,  bears  strong  testimony  to  Halifax's  powers. 

"  Da  questo  uomo  che  ha  gran  credito  nel  parlamento,  e  grande  elo- 
quenza,  non  si  possono  attendere  che  fiere  contradizioni,  e  nel  partito  Regio 
non  vi  e  un  uomo  da  contrapporsi."     Dec.  31. 

2  Lords'  and  Commons'  Journals,  Nov.  20.  1685. 


M85.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  311 

been  given  that  Westminster  Hall  should  be  fitted  up 
with  seats  and  hangings.  In  consequence  of  the  pro- 
rogation, the  hearing  of  the  cause  was  postponed  for 
an  indefinite  period  ;  and  Stamford  soon  regained  his 
liberty.^ 

Three  other  Whigs  of  great  eminence  were  in  con- 
finement when  the  session  closed,  Charles  Gerard,  Lord 
Gerard  of  Brandon,  eldest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Maccles- 
field, John  Hampden,  grandson  of  the  renowned  leader 
of  the  Long  Parliament,  and  Henry  Booth,  Lord  Dela- 
mere.  Gerard  and  Hampden  were  accused  of  having 
taken  part  in  the  Rye  House  Plot :  Delamere  of  hav- 
ing; abetted  the  Western  insurrection. 

It  was  not  the  intention  of  the  government  to  put 
either  Gerard  or  Hampden  to  death.  Grey  Tnaisof 
had  stipulated  for  their  lives  before  he  con-  ^dof'""'^'"'* 
sented  to  become  a  witness  ao-ainst  them.^  Hampden. 
But  there  was  a  still  stronger  reason  for  sparing  them. 
They  were  heirs  to  large  property  :  but  their  fathers 
were  still  living.  The  court  could  therefore  get  little 
in  the  way  of  forfeiture,  and  migiit  get  much  in  the 
way  of  ransom.  Gerard  was  tried,  and,  from  tlie  very 
scanty  accounts  which  have  come  down  to  us,  seems  to 
have  defended  himself  with  great  sj)irit  and  force.  He 
boasted  of  the  exertions  and  sacrifices  made  by  his  fam- 
ily in  the  cause  of  Charles  the  First,  and  proved  Rum- 
soy,  the  witness  who  had  murdered  Russell  by  telling 
one  story  and  Cornish  by  telling  anotlier,  to  be  utterly 
undeserving  of  credit.  The  jury,  witli  some  hesitation, 
found  a  verdict  of  Guilty.  After  long  imprisonment 
Gerard  was  suffered  to  redeem  himself.^     Hampden 

1  Lords'  Journals,  Nov.  11.  17,  18.  1(185. 

2  Burnet,  i.  646. 

•  Braraston'a  Memoirs;  Luttrell's  Diary. 


312  HISTORY  OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.VI 

had  inherited  the  political  opinions  and  a  large  share 
of  the  abilities  of  his  grandfather,  but  had  degenerated 
from  the  uprightness  and  the  courage  by  which  his 
grandfather  had  been  distinguished.  It  appears  that 
the  prisoner  was,  with  cruel  cunning,  long  kept  in  an 
agony  of  suspense,  in  order  that  his  family  might  be  in- 
duced to  pay  largely  for  mercy.  His  spirit  sank  under 
the  terrors  of  death.  When  brought  to  the  bar  of  the 
Old  Bailey  he  not  only  pleaded  guilty,  but  disgraced 
the  illustrious  name  which  he  bore  by  abject  submis- 
sions and  entreaties.  He  protested  that  he  had  not 
been  privy  to  the  design  of  assassination  ;  but  he  owned 
that  he  had  meditated  rebellion,  professed  deep  re- 
pentance for  his  offence,  implored  the  intercession  of 
the  Judges,  and  vowed  that,  if  the  royal  clemency  were 
extended  to  him,  his  whole  life  should  be  passed  in 
evincing  his  gratitude  for  such  goodness.  The  Whigs 
were  furious  at  his  pusillanimity,  and  loudly  declared 
him  to  be  far  more  deserving  of  blame  than  Grey,  who, 
even  in  turning  King's  evidence,  had  preserved  a  cer- 
tain decorum.  Hampden's  life  was  spared  ;  but  his 
family  paid  several  thousand  pounds  to  the  Chancellor. 
Some  courtiers  of  less  note  succeeded  in  extortino- 
smaller  sums.  The  unhappy  man  had  spirit  enough  to 
feel  keenly  the  degradation  to  which  he  had  stooped. 
He  survived  the  day  of  his  ignominy  several  years.  He 
lived  to  see  his  party  triumphant,  to  be  once  more  an 
important  member  of  it,  and  to  make  his  persecutors 
tremble  in  their  turn.  But  his  prosperity  was  embit- 
tered by  one  insu])portable  recollection.  He  never  re- 
gained his  cheerfulness,  and  at  length  died  by  his  own 
hand.' 

1  See  the  trial  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials;  Bramston's  Memoirs; 
Burnet,  i.  647.;  Lords'  Journals,  Dec.  20.  1689. 


1«86-]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  318 

That  Delamere,  if  he  had  needed  the  royal  mercy, 
would  have  found  it  is  not  very  probable.     It  iriniofDeia 
is  certain  that  eveiT  advantao;e  which  the  let-  "'""'■ 
ter  of  tlie  law  gave  to  the  government  was  used  against 
him  Avithout  scruple  or  shame.     He  was  in  a  difierent 
situation  fi'om  that  in  which  Stamford  stood.     The  in- 
dictment against  Stamford  had  been  removed  into  the 
House  of  Lords  during  the  session  of  Parliame^it,  and 
therefore  could  not  be  prosecuted  till  the  Parliament 
should  reassemble.     All   the   peers   would   then   have 
voices,  and  would  be  judges  as  well  of  law  as  of  fact. 
But  the  bill  against  Delamere  was  not  found  till  after 
the  prorogation.^     He  was  therefore  within  the  juris- 
diction of  the  Court  to  which  belongs,  durino-  a  recess 
of  Parliament,  the  cognizance  of  treasons  and  felonies 
committed   by   temporal   peers  ;    and    this    Court   was 
then   so   constituted   that   no   prisoner  charged  with  a 
political  offence  coukl  expect  an  impartial  trial.     The 
King  named  a  Lord  High  Steward.     The  Lord  Higli 
Steward  named,  at  his  discretion,  certain  peers  to  sit 
on   their   accused   brother.     The   number   to  be  sum- 
moned   was    indefinite.       No    challeno;e    was    allowed. 
A  simple  majority,  provided  that  it  consisted  of  twelve, 
was   sufficient    to    convict.     The    Hio;h    Steward   was 
sole  judge  of  the  law ;  and  the  Lords  Triers  formed 
merely  a  jury  to  pronounce  on  the  question  of  fact. 
Jeffi-eys   was   appointed   High  Steward.     He   selected 
thirty  Triers  ;  and  the  selection  was  characteristic  of 
the  man  and  of  the  times.     All  the  thirty  were  in  ])oh'- 
tics  vehemently  opposed  to  the  prisoner.     Fifteen  of 
them  were  colonels  of  regiments,  and  might  be  removed 
from  their  lucrative  commands  at  the  pleasure  of  the 
King.     Among  the  remaining  fifteen   were   the  Lord 
1  Lords'  Journals,  Nov.  9, 10. 16.  1685. 


814  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

Treasurer,  the  principal  Secretary  of  State.,  the  Steward 
of  the  Houseliold,  the  Comi)troller  of  the  Household, 
tlie  Captain  of  the  Band  of  Gentlemen  Pensioners,  the 
Queen's  Chamberlain,  and  other  persons  who  were 
bound  by  strong  ties  of  interest  to  the  government. 
Nevertheless,  Delamere  had  some  great  advantages 
over  the  humbler  culpi'its  who  had  been  arraigned  at 
the  Okl  Bailey.  There  the  jurymen,  violent  partisans, 
taken  for  a  single  day  by  courtly  Sheriffs  from  the  mass 
of  society  and  speedily  sent  back  to  mingle  with  that 
mass,  wer'^  under  no  restraint  of  shame,  and  being  little 
accustomed  to  weigh  evidence,  followed  without  scruple 
the  directions  of  the  bench.  But  in  the  High  Steward's 
Court  every  Ti-ier  was  a  man  of  some  experience  in 
grave  affairs.  Every  Trier  filled  a  considerable  space 
in  the  public  eye.  Every  Trier,  beginning  from  the 
lowest,  had  to  rise  separately  and  to  give  in  his  verdict, 
on  his  honour,  before  a  great  concourse.  That  verdict, 
accompanied  with  his  name,  would  go  to  every  part  of 
the  world,  and  would  live  in  history.  Moreover,  though 
the  selected  nobles  were  all  Tories,  and  almost  all  place- 
men, many  of  them  had  begun  to  look  with  uneasiness 
on  the  King's  proceedings,  and  to  doubt  whether  the 
case  of  Delamere  might  not  soon  be  their  own. 

Jeffreys  conducted  himself,  as  was  his  wont,  inso- 
lently and  unjustly.  He  had  indeed  an  old  grudge  to 
stimulate  his  zeal.  He  had  been  Chief  Justice  of  Ches- 
ter when  Delamere,  then  Mr.  Booth,  represented  that 
county  in  Parliament.  Booth  had  bitterly  complained 
to  the  Commons  that  the  dearest  interests  of  his  con- 
stituents were  intrusted  to  a  drunken  jackpudding.^ 
The  revengeful  judge  was  now  not  ashamed  to  resort 

*  Speech  on  the  Corruption  of  the  Judges  in  Lord  Delamere's  work^ 
1694. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  315 

to  artifices  whicli  even  in  an  advocate  would  have  been 
culpable.  He  reminded  the  Lords  Triers,  in  very  sig- 
nificant lano-uase,  that  Delamere  had,  in  Parliament, 
objected  to  the  bill  for  attainting  Monmouth,  a  fact 
which  was  not,  and  could  not  be,  in  evidence.  But  it 
was  not  in  the  power  of  JeftVeys  to  overawe  a  synod  of 
])eers  as  lie  had  been  in  the  habit  of  overawing  common 
juries.  The  evidence  for  the  crown  would  probably 
have  been  thought  amply  sufficient  on  the  Western 
Circuit  or  at  the  City  Sessions,  but  could  not  for  a 
moment  impose  on  such  men  as  Rochester,  Godolphin, 
and  Churchill ;  nor  were  they,  with  all  their  faults, 
dej)raved  enough  to  condemn  a  fellow  creature  to  death 
against  the  plainest  rules  of  justice.  Grey,  Wade,  and 
Goodenough  were  produced,  but  could  only  repeat  what 
they  had  heard  said  by  Monmouth  and  by  Wildman's 
emissaries.  The  principal  witness  for  the  prosecution, 
a  miscreant  named  Saxton,  who  had  been  concerned  in 
tlie  rebellion,  and  who  was  now  labouring  to  earn  his 
jjardon  by  swearing  against  all  who  were  obnoxious  to 
the  gov^ernment,  was  proved  by  overwhelming  evidence 
to  have  told  a  series  of  falsehoods.  All  the  Triers,  from 
Churchill  who,  as  junior  baron,  spoke  first,  up  to  the 
Treasurer,  pronounced,  on  their  honour,  that  Delamere 
was  not  guilty.  The  gravity  and  pomp  of  the  whole 
proceeding  made  a  deep  impression  even  on  the  Nun- 
cio, accustomed  as  he  was  to  the  ceremonies  of  Rome, 
ceremonies  which,  in  solemnity  and  splendour,  exceed 
all  that  the  rest  of  the  world  can  show.^  The  King, 
who  was  present,  and  was  unable  to  complain  of  a 
decision  evidently  just,  went  into  a  rage  with  Saxton, 
and  vowed  that  the   wretch   should  first  bo  pilloried 

*  Fu  una  funzione   picna   di   gravita,  di  ordine,  e  di  graii  fipecioaitk. 
Adda,  Jan.  i-^.  1G86. 


316  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

before  Westminster  Hall  for  perjury,  and  then  sent 
down  to  the  West  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered 
for  treason.^ 

The  public  joy  at  the  acquittal  of  Delamere  was 
Effect  of  his  great.  The  reign  of  terror  was  over.  The 
acquittal.  innoccut  bcgau  to  breathe  freely,  and  false 
accusers  to  tremble.  One  letter  written  on  this  occa- 
sion is  scarcely  to  be  read  without  tears.  The  widow 
of  Russell,  in  her  retirement,  learned  the  good  news 
with  mingled  feelings.  "  I  do  bless  God,"  she  wrote, 
"  that  he  has  caused  some  stop  to  be  put  to  the  shedding 
of  blood  in  this  poor  land.  Yet  when  I  should  rejoice 
with  them  that  do  rejoice,  I  seek  a  corner  to  weep  in. 
I  find  I  am  capable  of  no  more  gladness ;  but  every 
new  circumstance,  the  very  comparing  my  night  of 
sorrow  after  such  a  day,  with  theirs  of  joy,  does,  from 
a  reflection  of  one  kind  or  another,  rack  my  uneasy 
mind.  Though  I  am  far  from  wishing  the  close  of  theirs 
like  mine,  yet  I  cannot  refrain  giving  some  time  to  la- 
ment mine  Avas  not  like  theirs."  ^ 

And  now  the  tide  was  on  the  turn.  The  death  of 
Stafford,  witnessed  with  signs  of  tenderness  and  re- 
morse by  the  populace  to  whose  rage  he  was  sacrificed, 
marks  the  close  of  one  proscription.  The  acquittal  of 
Delamere  marks  the  close  of  another.  The  crimes 
which  had  disgraced  the  stormy  tribuneship  of  Shaftes- 
bury had  been  fearfully  expiated.  The  blood  of  inno- 
cent Papists  had  been  avenged  more  than  tenfold  by 
tlie  blood  of  zealous  Protestants.  Another  great  reac- 
tion had  commenced.  Factions  were  fast  taking  new 
forms.    Old  allies  were  separating.    Old  enemies  were 


18 

57. 


1  The  Trial  is  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials.     Van  Leeuwen,  Jan  44 
\  1686. 


2  Lady  Russell  to  Dr.  Fltzwilliain,  Jan.  15. 1686. 


1«W.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  317 

uniting.  Discontent  was  spreading  fast  through  all  the 
ranks  of  the  party  lately  dominant.  A  hope,  still  in- 
deed faint  and  indefinite,  of  victory  and  revenge,  ani- 
mated the  party  which  had  lately  seemed  to  be  extinct. 
With  such  omens  the  eventful  and  troubled  year  1G85 
terminated,  and  the  year  1686  began. 

The  j)rorogation  had  relieved  the  King  from  the  gen- 
tle remonstrances  of  tiie  Houses  :  but  he  had  parties  in 
still  to  listen  to  remonstrances,  similar  in  sub-  t"^*^ '■""''• 
stance,  though  uttered  in  a  tone  even  more  cautious  and 
subdued.  Some  men  who  had  hitherto  served  him  but 
too  strenuously  for  their  own  fame  and  for  the  public 
welfare  had  begun  to  feel  painful  misgivings,  and  occa- 
sionally ventured  to  hint  a  small  part  of  what  they  felt. 

During  many  years  the  zeal  of  the  English  Tory  for 
hereditary  monarchy  and  his  zeal  for  the  es-  Feeling  of 
tablished  religion  had  grown  up  together  and  tant  Tories. 
had  strengthened  each  other.  It  had  never  occurred 
to  him  that  the  two  sentiments,  which  seemed  insepa- 
rable and  even  identical,  might  one  day  be  found  to  be 
not  only  distinct  but  incompatible.  From  the  com- 
mencement of  the  strife  between  the  Stuarts  and  the 
Commons,  the  cause  of  the  crown  and  the  cause  of  the 
hierarchy  had,  to  all  appearance,  been  one.  Charles  the 
First  was  regarded  by  the  Church  as  her  own  martyr. 
If  Charles  the  Second  had  plotted  against  her,  he  had 
plotted  in  secret.  In  public  he  had  ever  professed  him- 
self her  grateful  and  devoted  son,  had  knelt  at  her 
altars,  and,  in  spite  of  his  loose  morals,  had  succeeded 
in  persuading  the  great  body  of  her  adherents  that  he 
lelt  a  sincere  preference  for  her.  Whatever  conflicts, 
therefore,  the  honest  Cavalier  miglit  have  had  to  main- 
tain against  Whigs  and  Roundheads,  he  had  at  least 
been  hitherto  undisturbed  by  conflict  in  his  own  mind. 


318  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  TI. 

He  had  seen  the  path  of  duty  plain  before  him. 
Through  good  and  evil  he  was  to  be  true  to  Church 
and  King.  But,  if  those  two  august  and  venerable 
powers,  which  had  hitherto  seemed  to  be  so  closely- 
connected  that  those  who  were  true  to  one  could  not 
be  false  to  the  other,  should  be  divided  by  a  deadly 
enmity,  what  course  was  the  orthodox  Royalist  to  take  ? 
What  situation  could  be  more  trying  than  that  of  a 
man  distracted  between  two  duties  equally  sacred,  be- 
tween two  affections  equally  ardent  ?  How  was  he  to 
give  to  Csesar  all  that  was  Caesar's,  and  yet  to  with- 
hold from  God  no  part  of  what  was  God's  ?  None  who 
felt  thus  could  have  watched,  without  deep  concern 
and  gloomy  forebodings,  the  dispute  between  the  King 
and  the  Parliament  on  the  subject  of  the  test.  If 
James  could  even  now  be  induced  to  reconsider  his 
course,  to  let  the  Houses  reassemble,  and  to  comply 
with  their  wishes,  all  might  yet  be  well. 

Such  were  the  sentiments  of  the  King's  two  kins- 
men,  the  Earls  of  Clarendon  and  Rochester.  The 
power  and  favour  of  these  noblemen  seemed  to  be  great 
indeed.  The  younger  brother  was  Lord  Treasurer  and 
prime  minister  ;  and  the  elder,  after  holding  the  Privy 
Seal  during  some  months,  had  been  appointed  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland.  The  venerable  Ormond  took  the 
same  side.  Middleton  and  Preston,  who,  as  managers 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  had  recently  learned  by 
proof  how  dear  the  established  religion  was  to  the  loyal 
gentry  of  England,  were  also  for  moderate  counsels. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  the  new  year  these  states- 
men and  the  great  party  w^hich  they  represented  had  to 
suffer  a  cruel  mortification.  That  the  late  King  had 
been  at  heart  a. Roman  Catholic  had  been,  during  some 
months,  suspected  and  whispered,  but  not  formally  an- 


168«.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  319 

nonnced.  The  disclosure,  indeed,  could  not  be  made 
without  great  scandal.  Charles  had,  times  without 
number,  declared  himself  a  Protestant,  and  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  receivino-  the  Eucharist  from  the  Bish- 
ops.  Those  churchmen  who  had  stood  by  him  in 
his  difficulties,  and  who  still  cherished  an  affectionate 
remembrance  of  him,  must  be  filled  with  shame  and 
indignation  by  learning  that  his  whole  life  had  been 
a  lie,  that,  while  he  professed  to  belong  to  their  com- 
munion, he  had  really  regarded  them  as  heretics, 
and  that  the  demagogues  who  had  represented  him 
as  a  concealed  Papist  had  been  the  only  people  who 
had  formed  a  correct  judgment  of  his  character.  Even 
Lewis  understood  enough  of  the  state  of  public  feeling 
in  England  to  be  aware  that  the  divulging  of  tlie  truth 

o  too 

might  do  harm,  and  had,  of  his  own  accord,  prom- 
ised to  keep  the  conversion  of  Charles  strictly  secret.^ 
James,  while  his  power  was  still  new,  had  thought  that 
on  this  point  it  was  advisable  to  be  cautious,  and  had 
not  ventured  to  inter  his  brother  with  the  rites  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  For  a  time,  therefore,  every  man 
was  at  liberty  to  believe  what  he  wished.  The  Pa])ists 
claimed  the  deceased  prince  as  their  proselyte.  The 
Whigs  execrated  him  as  a  hypocrite  and  a  renegade. 
The  Tories  regarded  the  report  of  his  apostasy  as  a 
calumny  which  Papists  and  Wliigs  had,  for  very  differ- 
ent reasons,  a  common  interest  in  circulating.  James 
now  took  a  step  which  greatly  disconcerted  Publication 

1  1      I         A  1  •  n^  .of  i)ap(>rs 

tlie  wliole  Anglican  party,      iwo  papers,  m  found  in  the 

...  1   !•      .1  •       1       xl  Strong' 1. OX 

which  were  set  forth  very  concisely  tlie  argu-  of chaiics  ir. 
ments  ordinarily  used  by  Roman  Catholics  against 
Protestants,  had  been  found  in  Charles's  strong  box, 
and  appeared  to  be  in  iiis  handwriting.      These  papers 

1  Lewis  to  Barillon,  Feb.  ^a.  1G86. 

VOL.  II.  21 


820  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

James  showed  triumphantly  to  several  Protestants, 
and  declared  that,  to  his  knowledge,  his  brother  had 
lived  and  died  a  Roman  Catholic.^  One  of  the  per- 
sons to  whom  the  manuscripts  were  exhibited  was 
Archbishop  Sancroft.  He  read  them  with  much  emo- 
tion, and  remained  silent.  Such  silence  was  only 
the  natural  effect  of  a  struggle  between  respect  and 
vexation.  But  James  supposed  that  the  Primate  was 
struck  dumb  by  the  irresistible  force  of  reason,  and 
eagerly  challenged  his  Grace  to  produce,  with  the  help 
of  the  whole  episcopal  bench,  a  satisfactory  reply. 
"  Let  me  have  a  solid  answer,  and  in  a  gentlemanlike 
style  ;  and  it  may  have  the  effect  which  you  so  much 
desire  of  binnging  me  over  to  your  Church."  The 
Archbishop  mildly  said  that,  in  his  opinion,  such  an 
answer  might,  without  much  difficulty,  be  written,  but 
declined  the  controversy  on  the  plea  of  reverence  for  the 
memory  of  his  deceased  master.  This  plea  the  King 
considered  as  the  subterfuge  of  a  vanquished  disputant.^ 
Had  His  Majesty  been  well  acquainted  with  the  polem- 
ical literature  of  the  preceding  century  and  a  half,  he 
would  have  known  that  the  documents  to  which  he 
attached  so  much  value  might  have  been  composed  by 
any  lad  of  fifteen  in  the  college  of  Douay,  and  con- 
tained nothing  which  had  not,  in  the  opinion  of  all 
Protestant  divines,  been  ten  thousand  times  refuted. 
In  his  ignorant  exultation  he  ordered  these  tracts  to  be 
printed  with  the  utmost  pomp  of  typography,  and  ap- 
pended to  them  a  declaration  attested  by  his  sign 
manual,  and  certifying  that  the  originals  were  in  his 
brother's  own  hand.  James  himself  distributed  the 
whole  edition  among  his  courtiers  and  among  the  peo- 

1  Evelyn's  Diary,  Oct.  2.  1685. 

2  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  9.,  Orlg.  Mem. 


16SG.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  321 

pie  of  humbler  rank  who  ci'owded  round  his  coach. 
He  gave  one  copy  to  a  young  woman  of  mean  condition 
whom  he  supposed  to  be  of  his  own  religious  persuasion, 
and  assured  her  that  she  would  be  greatly  edified  and 
comforted  by  the  perusal.  In  requital  of  his  kindness 
she  delivered  to  him,  a  few  days  later,  an  epistle  ad- 
juring him  to  come  out  of  the  mystical  Babylon  and  to 
dash  from  his  lips  the  cup  of  fornications.^ 

These  things  gave  great  uneasiness  to  Tory  church- 
men. Nor  were  the  most  respectable  Roman  Feeling  of 
Catholic  noblemen  much  better  pleased.  They  aMe"T<miau 
might  indeed  have  been  excused  if  passion  had,  ^•'^''''"'"=^- 
at  this  conjuncture,  made  them  deaf  to  the  voice  of  pm- 
dence  and  justice  :  for  they  had  suffered  much.  Prot- 
estant jealousy  had  degraded  tiiem  from  the  rank  to 
which  they  were  born,  had  closed  the  doors  of  the  Par- 
liament House  on  the  heirs  of  barons  who  had  sioned 
the  Charter,  had  pronounced  the  command  of  a  com- 
])any  of  foot  too  high  a  trust  for  the  descendants  of  the 
generals  who  had  conquered  at  Flodden  and  Saint  Qucn- 
tin.  There  was  scarcely  one  eminent  peer  attached  to 
the  old  faith  whose  honour,  whose  estate,  whose  life 
had  not  been  in  jeopardy,  who  had  not  passed  months 
in  the  Tower,  who  had  not  often  anticipated  for  him- 
self the  fate  of  Stiiff'ord.  Men  who  had  been  so  lone 
and  cruelly  o})pressed  might  have  been  pardoned  if  they 
had  eagerly  seized  the  first  opportunity  of  obtaining  at 
once  greatness  and  revenge.  But  neither  fanaticism 
nor  ambition,  neither  resentment  for  past  wrongs  nor 
the  intoxication  produced  by  sudden  good  fortune,  could 
prevent  the  most  distinguished  Roman  Catholics  from 

1  Van  l.eeiiwen,  .Ian.  l  .  and  it.  1C8G.  Her  letter,  though  very  lonjr 
*n(l  very  absurd,  was  thouglit  worth  sending  to  the  States  General  as  a 
sign  ul  (he  times. 


822  HISTORY   OF   ENCxLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

])erceiving  that  the  prosperity  which  they  at  length  en- 
joyed was  only  temporary,  and,  unless  wisely  used, 
might  be  fatal  to  them.  They  had  been  taught,  by  a 
cruel  expex'ience,  that  the  antipathy  of  the  nation  to 
their  religion  was  not  a  fancy  which  would  yield  to  the 
mandate  of  a  prince,  but  a  profound  sentiment,  the 
growth  of  five  generations,  diffused  through  all  ranks 
and  parties,  and  intertwined  not  less  closely  with  the 
principles  of  the  Tory  than  with  the  principles  of  the 
Whig.  It  was  indeed  in  the  power  of  the  King,  by  the 
exercise  of  his  prerogative  of  mercy,  to  suspend  the 
operation  of  the  penal  laws.  It  might  hereafter  be  in 
his  power,  by  discreet  management,  to  obtain  from  the 
Parliament  a  repeal  of  the  acts  which  imposed  civil  dis- 
abilities on  those  who  professed  his  religion.  But,  if 
he  attempted  to  subdue  the  Protestant  feeling  of  Eng- 
land by  rude  means,  it  was  easy  to  see  that  the  violent 
compression  of  so  powerful  and  elastic  a  spring  would 
be  followed  by  as  violent  a  recoil.  The  Roman  Catho- 
lic peers,  by  prematurely  attempting  to  force  their  way 
into  the  Privy  Council  and  the  House  of  Lords,  might 
lose  their  mansions  and  their  ample  estates,  and  might 
end  their  lives  as  traitors  on  Tower  Hill,  or  as  beggars 
at  the  porches  of  Italian  convents. 

Such  was  the  feeling  of  William  Herbert,  Earl  of 
Powis,  who  was  generally  regarded  as  the  chief  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  aristocracy,  and  who,  according  to 
Gates,  was  to  have  been  prime  minister  if  the  Popish 
plot  had  succeeded.  John  Lord  Bellasyse  took  the 
same  view  of  the  state  of  affairs.  In  his  youth  he  had 
fought  gallantly  for  Charles  the  First,  had  been  re- 
warded after  the  Restoration  with  high  honours  and 
commands,  and  had  quitted  them  when  the  Test  Act 
was  passed.     With  these  distinguished  leaders  all  the 


I 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  323 

noblest  and  most  opulent  members  of  their  church  con- 
curred, except  Lord  Arundell  of  Wardour,  an  old  man 
fast  smkino;  into  second  childhood. 

But  there  was  at  the  court  a  small  knot  of  Roman 
Catholics  whose  hearts  had  been  ulcerated  by  c^abai  of  vio- 
old  injuries,  whose  heads  had  been  turned  by  catiaoiics. 
recent  elevation,  who  were  impatient  to  climb  to  the 
highest  honours  of  the  state,  and  who,  having  little  to 
lose,  were  not  troubled  by  thoughts  of  the  day  of  reck- 
oning. One  of  these  was  Roger  Palmer,  Eai'l 
of  Castelmaine  in  Ireland,  and  husband  of  the 
Duchess  of  Cleveland.  His  title  had  notoriously  been 
purchased  by  his  wife's  dishonour  and  his  own.  His 
fortune  was  small.  His  temi)er,  naturally  ungentle, 
had  been  exasperated  by  his  domestic  vexations,  by  the 
public  reproaches,  and  by  what  he  had  undergone  in 
the  days  of  the  Popish  plot.  He  had  been  long  a  pris- 
oner, and  had  at  length  been  tried  for  his  life.  Ha])- 
pily  for  him,  he  was  not  put  to  the  bar  till  the  hrst 
burst  of  popular  rage  had  spent  itself,  and  till  the  credit 
of  the  false  witnesses  had  been  blown  upon.  He  had 
therefore  escaped,  though  very  narrowly.^  With  Cas- 
telmaine was  allied  one  of  the  most  favoured 
of  his  wife's  hundred  lovers,  Henry  Jennyn, 
whom  James  had  lately  created  a  peer  by  the  title  of 
Lord  Dover.  Jermyn  had  been  distinguished  more 
than  twenty  years  before  by  his  vagrant  amours  and 
his  desperate  duels.  He  was  now  ruined  by  play,  and 
was  eager  to  retrieve  his  fallen  fortunes  by  means  of 
lucrative   posts   from   which    the   laAvs   excluded   him.^ 

^  See  his  trial  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials,  and  his  curious  manifesto, 
printed  in  1681. 

2  Mdmoires  de  Grammont;  Pepys's  Diary,  Aug.  19.  1602.  Bonrcpaux  to 
Seignelay,  Feb.  ^l^.  1686. 


324  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

To  the   same   party  belonged   an    intriguing   pushing 
Irishman  named  White,  who  had  been  much 

White. 

abroad,  who  had  served  the  House  of  Aus- 
tria as  sometliing  between  an  envoy  and  a  spy,  and  who 
had  been  rewarded  for  his  services  with  the  title  of 
Marquess  of  Albeville.^ 

Soon  after  the  prox'ogation  this  reckless  faction  was 

strengthened  by  an  important  reinforcement. 

Richard  Talbot,  Earl  of  Tyrconnel,  the  fiercest 

and  most  uncompromising  of  all  those  who  hated  the 

liberties  and  religion  of  England,  arrived  at  court  from 

Dublin. 

Talbot  was  descended  from  an  old  Norman  family 
which  had  been  long  settled  in  Leinster,  which  had 
there  sunk  into  degeneracy,  which  had  adopted  the 
manners  of  the  Celts,  which  had,  like  the  Celts,  ad- 
hered to  the  old  religion,  and  which  had  taken  part 
with  the  Celts  in  the  rebellion  of  1641.  In  his  youth 
he  had  been  one  of  the  most  noted  sharpers  and  bul- 
lies of  London.  He  had  been  introduced  to  Charles 
and  James  when  they  were  exiles  in  Flanders,  as  a  man 
fit  and  ready  for  the  infamous  service  of  assassinating 
the  Protector.  Soon  after  the  Restoration,  Talbot  at- 
tempted to  obtain  the  favour  of  the  royal  family  by  a 
service  more  infamous  still,  A  plea  was  wanted  which 
might  ju.stify  the  Duke  of  York  in  breaking  that  prom- 
ise of  marriage  by  which  he  had  obtained  from  Anne 
Hyde  the  last  proof  of  female  affection.  Such  a  plea 
Talbot,  in  concert  with  some  of  his  dissolute  compan- 
ions, undertook  to  furnish.  They  agreed  to  describe 
the  poor  young  lady  as  a  creature  without  virtue,  shame, 
or  delicacy,  and  made  up  long  romances  about  tender 
interviews  and  stolen  favours.  Talbot  in  particular 
1  Bonrepaux  to  Seignelay,  Feb.  -ij..  1686. 


1686.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  825 

related  how,  in  one  of  his  secret  visits  to  lier,  he  had 
unluckily  overturned  the  Chancellor's  inkstand  upon 
a  pile  of  papers,  and  how  cleverly  she  had  averted  a 
discovery  by  laying  the  blame  of  the  accident  on  her 
monkey.  These  stories,  which,  if  they  had  been  true, 
would  never  have  passed  the  lips  of  any  but  the  basest 
of  mankind,  were  pure  inventions.  Talbot  was  soon 
forced  to  own  that  they  were  so  ;  and  he  owned  it 
Mathout  a  blush.  The  injured  lady  became  Duchess 
of  York.  Had  her  husband  been  a  man  really  upright 
and  honourable,  he  would  have  driven  from  his  presence 
with  indignation  and  contempt  the  wretches  who  had 
slandered  her.  But  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  James's 
character  was  that  no  act,  however  wicked  and  shame- 
ful, which  had  been  prompted  by  a  desire  to  gain  his 
favour,  ever  seemed  to  him  deserving  of  chsapprobation. 
Talbot  continued  to  frequent  the  court,  appeared  daily 
with  brazen  front  before  the  princess  whose  ruin  he 
had  plotted,  and  was  installed  into  the  lucrative  post  of 
chief  pandar  to  her  husband.  In  no  long  time  White- 
hall was  thrown  into  confusion  by  the  news  that  Dick 
Talbot,  as  he  was  commonly  called,  had  laid  a  plan  to 
murder  the  Duke  of  Ormond.  The  bravo  was  sent  to 
the  Tower :  but  in  a  few  days  he  was  again  swaggering 
about  the  galleries,  and  carrying  billets  backward  and 
forward  between  his  j)atron  and  the  ugliest  maids  of 
honour.  It  was  in  vain  that  old  and  discreet  counsel- 
lors implored  the  royal  brothers  not  to  countenance  this 
bad  man,  who  had  nothing  to  recommend  him  excej^t 
liis  fine  person  and  his  taste  in  dress.  Talbot  was  not 
oidy  welcome  at  the  palace  when  the  bottle  or  the  dice- 
box  was  ffoino;  round,  but  was  heard  with  attention  on 
matters  of  business.  He  affected  the  character  of  an 
Irish  patriot,  and  pleaded,  with  great  audacity,  and  some- 


326  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

times  with  success,  the  cause  of  his  countrymen  whose 
estates  had  been  confiscated.  He  took  cai'e,  however, 
to  be  well  paid  for  his  services,  and  succeeded  in  ac- 
quiring, partly  by  the  sale  of  his  influence,  partly  by 
gambling,  and  partly  by  pimping,  an  estate  of  three 
thousand  pounds  a  year.  For  under  an  outward  show 
of  levity,  profusion,  improvidence,  and  eccentric  im- 
pudence, he  was  in  truth  one  of  the  most  mercenary 
and  crafty  of  mankind.  He  was  now  no  longer  young, 
and  was  expiating  by  severe  svifferings  the  dissolute- 
ness of  his  youth  :  but  age  and  disease  had  made  no 
essential  change  in  his  character  and  manners.  He 
still,  whenever  he  opened  his  mouth,  ranted,  cursed  and 
swore  with  such  frantic  violence  that  superficial  observ- 
ers set  him  down  for  the  wildest  of  libertines.  The 
multitude  was  unable  to  conceive  that  a  man  who,  even 
when  sober,  was  more  furious  and  boastful  than  others 
when  they  were  drunk,  and  who  seemed  utterly  inca- 
pable of  disguising  any  emotion  or  keeping  any  secret, 
could  really  be  a  coldhearted,  farsighted,  scheming 
sycophant.  Yet  such  a  man  was  Talbot.  In  truth  his 
hypocrisy  was  of  a  fiir  higher  and  rarer  sort  than  the 
hypocrisy  which  had  flourished  in  Barebone's  Parlia- 
ment. For  the  consummate  hypocrite  is  not  he  wh(? 
conceals  vice  behind  the  semblance  of  virtue,  but  he 
who  makes  the  vice  which  he  has  no  objection  to  show 
a  stalking  horse  to  cover  darker  and  more  profit<ible 
^^ce  which  it  is  for  his  interest  to  hide. 

Talbot,  raised  by  James  to  the  earldom  of  Tyrconnel, 
had  commanded  the  troops  in  Ireland  during  the  nine 
months  which  elapsed  between  the  termination  of  the 
viceroyalty  of  Ormond  and  the  commencement  of  the 
viceroyalty  of  Clarendon.  When  the  new  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant was  about  to  leave  London  for  Dublin,  the  Gen- 


1C86.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  327 

eral  was  summoned  from  Dublin  to  London.  Dick 
Talbot  had  long  been  well  known  on  the  road  which 
he  had  now  to  travel.  Between  Chester  and  the  capi- 
tal there  was  not  an  inn  where  he  had  not  been  in  a 
brawl.  He  was  now  more  insolent  and  turbulent  tiian 
ever.  He  pressed  horses  in  defiance  of  law,  swore  at 
the  cooks  and  postilions,  and  almost  raised  mobs  by  his 
insolent  rodomontades.  The  Refox-mation,  he  told  the 
people,  had  ruined  everything.  But  fine  times  were 
coming.  The  Catholics  would  soon  be  uppermost. 
The  heretics  should  pay  for  all.  Raving  and  blas- 
j)iieming  incessantly,  like  a  demoniac,  he  came  to  the 
court.^  As  soon  as  he  was  there,  he  allied  himself 
closely  with  Castelmaine,  Dover,  and  Albeville.  These 
men  called  with  one  voice  for  war  on  the  constitution 
of  the  Church  and  the  State.  They  told  their  master 
that  he  owed  it  to  his  I'eligion  and  to  the  dignity  of 
his  crown  to  stand  firm  against  the  outcry  of  heretical 
demaoooues,  and  exhorted  him  to  let  the  Parliament 
see  from  the  first  that  he  would  be  master  in  spite  of 
<)l)position,  and  that  the  oidy  effect  of  opposition  would 
be  to  make  him  a  hard  master. 

Each  of  the  two  parties  into  which  the  court  Avas 
divided  had  zealous  foreign  allies.     The  min-  FepUnj^of 

/»   o        •  PI         V-i  •  1        p     1  the  ministers 

isters  of  Spam,  of  the   Lmpu'e,  and   of  the  offonitju 

.  goTL-rn- 

States  General  were  now  as  anxious  to  sup-  ments. 
port  Rochester  as  they  had  formerly  been  to  sujiport 
Vlalifax.  All  the  niffuence  of  Barillon  was  employed 
on  the  other  side  ;  and  Barillon  was  assisted  by  an- 
other French  agent,  inferior  to  him  in  station,  but 
superior  in    abilities,  Bonrepaux.      Barillon    was    not 

1  M^moircs  dc  Grainmont ;  l-ilV  dl  Kilwanl,  l!ail  of  ClaiXMidon ;  Cone- 
hpondence  of  Henry,  Earl  of  Clarendon, /J'iss/w,  particularly  the  letter  dated 
Dec.  29.  1685;  Sheridan  MS.  among  the  Stuart  Papers;  Ellis  Correspond- 
ence, Jan.  12.  1686. 


828  HISTORY   OF    EXGLAN]).  |Cii.  VI 

without  parts,  and  possessed  in  larr^e  measure  the 
graces  and  accomphshments  which  then  distinguislied 
the  French  gentry.  But  his  capacity  was  scarcely 
equal  to  what  his  great  place  required.  He  had  be- 
come sluggish  and  self  indulgent,  liked  the  pleasures 
of  society  and  of  the  table  better  than  business,  and 
on  great  emergencies  generally  waited  for  admoni- 
tions and  even  for  reprimands  from  Versailles  before 
he  showed  much  activity.^  Bonrepaux  had  raised 
himself  from  obscurity  by  the  inteUigence  and  indus- 
try which  he  had  exhibited  as  a  clerk  in  the  depart- 
ment of  the  marine,  and  was  esteemed  an  adept  in 
the  mystery  of  mercantile  politics.  At  the  close  of 
the  year  1685,  he  was  sent  to  London,  charged  with 
several  special  commissions  of  high  importance.  He 
was  to  lay  the  ground  for  a  treaty  of  commerce  ;  he 
was  to  ascertain  and  report  the  state  of  the  English 
fleets  and  dockyards  ;  and  he  was  to  make  some  over- 
tures to  the  Huguenot  refugees,  who,  it  was  supposed, 
had  been  so  effectually  tamed  by  penury  and  exile,  that 
they  would  thankfully  accept  almost  any  terms  of  recon- 
ciliation. The  new  Envoy's  origin  was  plebeian  ;  his 
stature  was  dwarfish,  his  countenance  was  ludicrously 
ugly,  and  his  accent  was  that  of  his  native  Gascony : 
but  his  strong  sense,  his  keen  penetration,  and  his 
lively  wit  eminently  qualified  him  for  his  post.  In 
spite  of  every  disadvantage  of  birth  and  figure  he  was 
soon  known  as  a  pleasing  companion  and  as  a  skil- 
ful diplomatist.  He  contrived,  while  flii'ting  with  the 
Duchess  of  Mazarin,  discussing  literary  questions  with 
Waller  and  Saint  Evremond,  and  corresponding  with 

1  See  his  later  correspondence,  ;?rtss;»i  ;  St.  Evremond, /j^ss/zh  ;  Madame 
Je  S^vign^'s  Letters  in  the  beginning  of  1689.  See  also  the  instructions  to 
Tallard  after  the  peace  of  Ryswick,  in  the  French  Archives. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  329 

La  Fuiitaine,  to  acquire  a  considerable  knowledge  of 
English  politics.  His  skill  in  maritime  affairs  recom- 
mended him  to  James,  who  had,  during  many  years, 
paid  close  attention  to  the  business  of  the  Admiralty, 
and  understood  that  business  as  well  as  he  was  capable 
of  understanding  anything.  They  conversed  every  day 
long  and  freely  about  the  state  of  the  shipping  and  the 
dockyards.  The  result  of  this  intimacy  was,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  that  the  keen  and  vigilant  French- 
man conceived  a  great  contempt  for  the  King's  abilities 
and  character.  The  world,  he  said,  had  much  over- 
rated His  Britannic  Majesty,  who  had  less  capacity 
than  Chai-les,  and  not  moi*e  virtue.  ^ 

The  two  envoys  of  Lewis,  though  pursuing  one  ob- 
ject, very  judiciously  took  different  patlis.  They  made 
a  partition  of  the  court.  Bonrepaux  lived  chiefly  with 
Rochester  and  Rochester's  adherents.  Bariilon's  con- 
nections were  chiefly  with  the  opposite  faction.  The 
consequence  was  that  they  sometimes  saw  the  same 
event  in  different  points  of  view.  The  best  account 
now  extant  of  the  contest  which  at  this  time  agitated 
Whitehall  is  to  be  found  in  their  despatches. 

As  each  of  the  two  parties  at  the  Court  of  James  had 
the  support  of  foreign  princes,  so  each  had  also  The  Pope 
tlie  support  or  an  ecclesiastical  authority  to  derof.)«;-=us 
which  the  King  paid  great  deference.  The  eSother. 
Supreme  Pontiff'  was  for  legal  and  moderate  courses  ; 
and  his  sentiments  were  expressed  by  the  Nuncio  and 
by  the  Vicar  Apostolic.^    On  the  other  side  was  a  body 

1  St.  Simon,  AFomoires,  1G97, 1719;  St.  Evremond;  La  Fontaine;  Bonre- 
paux to  Seifinelay,  y—j-^  ^^^-  A*  ■'*'^^- 

2  Adda,  Nov.  ^.,  Dec.  ^.  and  Dec.  |1.  IGSr,.  In  these  despntches 
Adda  gives  stronj;  reasons  lor  compromisins  matters  l)y  aholisliin^^  the 
penal  laws  and  leaving  the  test.  He  rails  the  quarrel  witli  the  Parliament 
«  "gran  disgrazia."     He  repeatci'Iy  hnits  that  the  King  might,  by  a  con- 


330  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

of  which  the  weight  balanced  even  the  weight  of  the 
Papacy,  the  mighty  Order  of  Jesus. 

That  at  this  conjuncture  these  two  great  spiritual 
poAvers,  once,  as  it  seemed,  inseparably  alhed,  should 
have  been  opposed  to  each  other,  is  a  most  important 
and  remarkable  circumstance.  During  a  period  of  little 
less  than  a  thousand  years  the  regular  clergy  had  been 
the  chief  support  of  the  Holy  See.  By  that  See  they 
had  been  protected  from  episcopal  interference  ;  and 
the  protection  which  they  had  received  had  been  amply 
repaid.  But  for  their  exertions  it  is  probable  that  the 
Bishop  of  Rome  would  have  been  merely  the  honorary 
president  of  a  vast  aristocracy  of  prelates.  It  was  by 
the  aid  of  the  Benedictines  that  Gregory  the  Seventh 
was  enabled  to  contend  at  once  against  the  Franconian 
Cassars  and  against  the  secular  priesthood.  It  was  by 
the  aid  of  the  Dominicans  and  Franciscans  that  In- 
nocent the  Third  crushed  the  Albigensian  sectaries. 
The  Order  Three  centuries  later  the  Pontificate,  ex- 
oi  je*us.  posed  to  new  dangers  more  formidable  than 
had  ever  before  threatened  it,  was  saved  by  a  new 
religious  order,  which  was  animated  by  intense  enthu- 
siasm and  organized  with  exquisite  skill.  When  the 
Jesuits  came  to  the  rescue,  they  found  the  Papacy 
in  extreme  peril:  but  fi'om  that  moment  the  tide  of 
battle  turned.  Protestantism,  which  had,  during  a 
whole  generation,  candied  all  before  it,  was  stopped  in 
its  progress,  and  rapidly  beaten  back  from  the  foot  of 
the  Alps  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic.  Before  the  Order 
had  existed  a  hundred  years,  it  had  filled  the  whole 
world  with  memorials  of  great  things  done  and  suffered 

stitutional  policy,  have  obtained  much  for  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  that 
the  attempt  to  relieve  them  illegally  is  likely  to  bring  great  calamities  on 
them. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  331 

for  the  faith.  No  reh'gious  community  could  produce  a 
list  of  men  so  variously  distinguished :  none  had  ex- 
tended its  operations  over  so  vast  a  space  ;  yet  in  none 
had  there  ever  been  such  perfect  unity  of  feeling  and 
action.  There  was  no  region  of  the  globe,  no  walk 
of  speculative  or  of  active  life,  in  which  Jesuits  were 
not  to  be  found.  They  guided  the  counsels  of  Kings. 
They  deciphered  Latin  inscriptions.  They  observed 
the  motions  of  Jupiter's  satellites.  They  published 
whole  libraries,  controversy,  casuistry,  history,  treatises 
on  optics,  Alcaic  odes,  editions  of  the  fathers,  madri- 
gals, catechisms,  and  lampoons.  The  liberal  education 
of  youth  passed  almost  entirely  into  their  hands,  and 
was  conducted  by  them  with  conspicuous  ability.  They 
appear  to  have  discovered  the  precise  point  to  which 
intellectual  culture  can  be  carried  without  risk  of  in- 
tellectual emancij)ation.  Enmity  itself  was  compelled 
to  own  that,  in  the  art  of  managino-  and  formino;  the 
tender  mhid,  they  had  no  equals.  Meanwhile  they 
assiduously  and  successfiilly  cultivated  the  eloquence 
of  the  pulpit.  With  still  greater  assiduity  and  still 
greater  success  they  applied  themselves  to  the  ministry 
of  the  confessional.  Throughout  Roman  Catholic  Eu- 
rope the  secrets  of  every  government  and  of  almost  every 
family  of  note  were  in  their  keeping.  Tiiey  glided  from 
one  Protestant  country  to  another  under  innumerable 
disguises,  as  gay  Cavaliers,  as  simple  rustics,  as  Puritan 
preachers.  They  wandered  to  countries  which  neither 
mercantile  avidity  nor  liberal  curiosity  had  ever  im- 
pelled any  stranger  to  explore.  They  were  to  be 
found  in  the  garb  of  Mandarins,  su])erintending  the  ob- 
servatory at  Pekin.  They  were  to  be  found,  sjkuIc  in 
hand,  teaching  the  rudiments  of  agriculture  to  the 
savages  of  Paraguay.     Yet,  whatever  might  be  their 


382  HISTORY    OF    ENGLAND.  [Cii.  VI 

residence,  whatever  might  be  their  employment,  tlieir 
spirit  was  the  same,  entire  devotion  to  the  common 
cause,  unreasoning  obedience  to  the  central  authority. 
None  of  them  liad  chosen  his  dwelling  place  or  his 
vocation  for  himself.  Whether  the  Jesuit  should  live 
under  the  arctic  circle  or  under  the  equator,  whether 
he  should  pass  his  life  in  arranging  gems  and  collating 
manuscripts  at  the  Vatican  or  in  persuading  naked 
barbarians  under  the  Southern  Cross  not  to  eat  each 
other,  were  matters  which  he  left  with  profound  sub- 
mission to  the  decision  of  others.  If  he  was  wanted 
at  Lima,  he  was  on  the  Atlantic  in  the  next  fleet.  If 
he  w^as  wanted  at  Bagdad,  he  was  toiling  through  the 
desert  with  the  next  caravan.  If  his  ministry  was 
needed  in  some  country  where  his  life  was  more  in- 
secure than  that  of  a  wolf,  v^^here  it  was  a  crime  to 
harbour  him,  where  the  heads  and  quarters  of  his 
brethren,  fixed  in  the  public  places,  showed  him  what 
he  had  to  expect,  he  went  without  remonstrance  or 
hesitation  to  his  doom.  Nor  is  this  heroic  spirit  yet 
extinct.  When,  in  our  own  time,  a  new  and  terrible 
pestilence  passed  round  the  globe,  when,  in  some  great 
cities,  fear  had  dissolved  all  the  ties  which  hold  society 
together,  when  the  secular  clergy  had  forsaken  their 
flocks,  when  medical  succour  was  not  to  be  purchased 
by  gold,  when  the  strongest  natural  affections  had 
yielded  to  the  love  of  life,  even  then  the  Jesuit  was 
found  by  the  pallet  which  bishop  and  curate,  physi- 
cian and  nurse,  father  and  mother,  had  deserted,  bend- 
ing over  infected  lips  to  catch  the  faint  accents  of  con- 
fession, and  holding  up  to  the  last,  before  the  expiring 
penitent,  the  image  of  the  expiring  Redeemer. 

But  with   the  admirable    energy,  disinterestedness, 
and  selfdevotion  which  were  characteristic  of  the  So- 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  333 

ciety,  great  "sices  were  mingled.  It  was  alleged,  and 
not  without  foundation,  that  the  ardent  public  spirit 
which  juade  the  Jesuit  regardless  of  his  ease,  of  his 
liberty,  and  of  his  life,  made  him  also  regardless  of 
truth  and  of  mercy  ;  that  no  means  which  could  pro- 
mote the  interest  of  his  religion  seemed  to  him  un- 
lawful, and  that  by  the  interest  of  his  religion  he  tt)o 
often  meant  the  interest  of  his  Society.  It  was  alleged 
that,  in  the  most  atrocious  plots  recorded  in  history, 
his  agency  could  be  distinctly  traced  ;  that,  constant 
only  in  attachment  to  the  fraternity  to  which  he  be- 
longed, he  was  in  some  countries  the  most  dangerous 
enemy  of  freedom,  and  in  others  the  most  dangerous 
enemy  of  order.  The  mighty  victories  which  he  boasted 
that  he  had  achieved  in  the  cause  of  the  Church  were, 
in  the  judgment  of  many  illustrious  members  of  that 
Church,  rather  apparent  than  real.  He  had  indeed 
laboured  with  a  wonderful  show  of  success  to  reduce 
the  world  under  her  laws ;  but  he  had  done  so  by 
relaxing  her  laws  to  suit  the  temper  of  the  world. 
Instead  of  toiling;  to  elevate  human  nature  to  the  noble 
standard  fixed  by  divine  precept  and  example,  he  had 
lowered  the  standard  till  it  was  beneath  the  average 
level  of  human  nature.  He  orloried  in  multitudes  of 
converts  who  had  been  baptized  in  the  remote  regions 
of  the  East :  but  it  was  reported  that  from  some  of 
those  converts  the  facts  on  which  the  whole  theoloc^v 
of  the  Gospel  depends  had  been  cunningly  concealed, 
and  that  others  were  permitted  to  avoid  persecution 
by  bowing  down  before  the  images  of  false  gods,  while 
internally  repeating  Paters  and  Aves.  Nor  was  it  only 
in  heathen  countries  that  such  arts  were  said  to  be 
practised.  It  was  not  strange  that  people  of  all  ranks, 
and  especially  of  the   highest  ranks,   crowded  to  the 


334  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

confessionals  in  the  Jesuit  temples ;  for  from  those  con- 
fessionals none  went  discontented  away.  There  the 
priest  was  all  things  to  all  men.  He  showed  .just  so 
much  rigour  as  might  not  drive  those  who  knelt  at  his 
spiritual  tribunal  to  the  Dominican  or  the  Franciscan 
church.  If  he  had  to  deal  with  a  mind  truly  devout, 
he  spoke  in  the  saintly  tones  of  the  primitive  fathers : 
but  with  that  large  part  of  mankind  who  have  religion 
enough  to  make  them  uneasy  when  they  do  wrong, 
and  not  religion  enough  to  keep  them  from  doing 
wrong,  he  followed  a  very  different  system.  Since  he 
could  not  reclaim  them  from  guilt,  it  was  his  business 
to  save  them  from  remorse.  He  had  at  his  command 
an  immense  dispensary  of  anodynes  for  wounded  con- 
sciences. In  the  books  of  casuistry  which  had  been 
written  by  his  brethren,  and  printed  with  the  approba- 
tion of  his  superiors,  were  to  be  found  doctrines  con- 
solatory to  transgressors  of  every  class.  There  the 
bankrupt  was  taught  how  he  might,  without  sin,  secrete 
his  goods  from  liis  creditors.  The  servant  was  taught 
how  he  might,  without  sin,  run  oif  with  his  master's 
plate.  The  pandar  was  assured  that  a  Christian  man 
might  innocently  earn  his  living  by  carrying  letters  and 
messages  between  married  women  and  their  gallants. 
The  high  spirited  and  punctilious  gentlemen  of  France 
were  gratified  by  a  decision  in  favour  of  duelling. 
The  Italians,  accustomed  to  darker  and  baser  modes  of 
vengeance,  were  glad  to  learn  that  they  might,  with- 
out anv  crime,  shoot  at  their  enemies  from  behind 
hedges.  To  deceit  was  given  a  license  sufficient  to 
destroy  the  whole  value  of  human  contracts  and  of 
human  testimony.  In  truth,  if  society  continued  to 
hold  together,  if  life  and  property  enjoyed  any  security, 
it  was  because  common    sense   and   common    human- 


1680.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  335 

itv  restiaint'd  men  from  doino;  what  the  Order  of 
Jesus  assured  them  that  they  might  with  a  safe  eon- 
science  do. 

So  strangely  were  good  and  evil  intermixed  in  the 
character  of  these  celebrated  brethren  ;  and  the  inter- 
mixture was  the  secret  of  their  gigantic  power.  That 
power  could  never  have  belonged  to  mere  hypocrites. 
It  could  never  have  belonged  to  rimd  moralists.  It 
was  to  be  attained  only  by  men  sincerely  enthusiastic 
in  the  pursuit  of  a  great  end,  and  at  the  same  time  un- 
scrupulous as  to  the  choice  of  means. 

From  the  first  the  Jesuits  had  been  bound  by  a  pe- 
culiar allegiance  to  the  Pope.  Their  mission  had  been 
not  less  to  quell  all  mutiny  within  the  Church  than  to 
repel  the  hostility  of  her  avowed  enemies.  Their  doc- 
trine was  in  the  highest  deoq-ee  what  has  been  called  on 
our  side  of  the  Alps  Ultramontane,  and  differed  almost 
as  much  from  the  doctrine  of  Bossuet  as  from  that  of 
Luther.  They  condemned  the  Gallican  liberties,  the 
claim  of  oecumenical  councils  to  control  the  Holy  See, 
and  the  claim  of  Bishops  to  an  independent  commission 
from  heaven.  Lainez,  in  the  name  of  the  whole  fra- 
ternity, proclaimed  at  Trent,  amidst  the  applause  of 
the  creatures  of  Pius  the  Fourth,  and  the  murmurs  of 
French  and  Spanish  prelates,  that  the  government  of 
the  faithful  had  been  committed  by  Christ  to  the  Pope 
alone,  that  in  the  Pope  alone  all  sacerdotal  authority 
was  concentrated,  and  that  through  the  Pope  alone 
priests  and  bisliops  derived  whatever  power  they  pos- 
sessed.' During  many  years  the  union  between  the 
Supreme  Pontiff's  and  the  Order  had  continued  un- 
broken. Had  that  union  been  still  unbroken  when 
James  the  Second  ascended  the  English  tlu'one,  had 

1  Fra  Paolo,  lib.  vii.;  Pallavicino,  lib.  xviii.  cap.  15. 
VOL.  11.  22 


ooG  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Cii.  VL 

the  influence  of  the  Jesuits  as  well  as  the  influence  of 
tlie  Pope  been  exerted  in  favour  of  a  moderate  and 
constitutional  policy,  it  is  probable  that  the  great  revo- 
lution which  in  a  short  time  changed  the  whole  state  of 
European  affairs  would  never  have  taken  place.  But, 
even  before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
Society,  proud  of  its  services  and  confident  in  its 
strength,  had  become  impatient  of  the  yoke.  A  gen- 
eration of  Jesuits  sprang  up,  who  looked  for  protection 
and  guidance  rather  to  the  court  of  France  than  to  the 
court  of  Rome  ;  and  this  disposition  was  not  a  little 
strengthened  when  Innocent  the  Eleventh  was  raised 
to  the  papal  throne. 

The  Jesuits  were,  at  that  time,  engaged  in  a  war  to 
the  death  against  an  enemy  whom  they  had  at  first  dis- 
dained,  but  whom  they  had  at  length  been  forced  to 
regard  with  respect  and  fear.  Just  when  their  pros- 
perity was  at  the  height,  they  were  braved  by  a  hand- 
ful of  opponents,  who  had  indeed  no  influence  with  the 
rulers  of  this  world,  but  who  were  strong  in  religious 
faith  and  intellectual  energy.  Then  followed  a  long, 
a  strange,  a  glorious  conflict  of  genius  against  power. 
The  Jesuit  called  cabinets,  tribunals,  universities  to  his 
aid ;  and  they  responded  to  the  call.  Port  Royal  ap- 
pealed, not  in  vain,  to  the  hearts  and  to  the  understand- 
ings of  millions.  The  dictators  of  Christendom  found 
themselves,  on  a  sudden,  in  the  position  of  culprits. 
They  were  arraigned  on  the  charge  of  having  system- 
atically debased  the  standai'd  of  evangelical  morality, 
for  the  purpose  of  increasing  their  OAvn  influence ;  and 
the  charge  was  enforced  in  a  manner  which  at  once 
arrested  the  attention  of  the  whole  world  :  for  the  chief 
accuser  was  Blaise  Pascal.  His  intellectual  powers 
were  such  as  have  rarely  been  bestowed  on  any  of  the 


1886.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  337 

children  of  men ;  and  the  vehemence  of  the  zeal  which 
animated  him  was  but  too  well  proved  by  the  cruel 
penances  and  vigils  under  which  his  macerated  frame 
sank  into  an  early  grave.  His  spirit  was  the  spirit  of 
Saint  Bernard :  but  the  delicacy  of  his  wit,  the  purity, 
the  energy,  the  simplicity  of  his  rhetoric,  had  never 
been  equalled,  except  by  the  great  masters  of  Attic 
eloquence.  All  Europe  read  and  admired,  laughed  and 
wept.  The  Jesuits  attempted  to  reply :  but  their  feeble 
answers  were  received  by  the  public  with  shouts  of 
mockery.  They  wanted,  it  is  true,  no  talent  or  accom- 
plishment into  which  men  can  be  drilled  by  elaborate 
discipline ;  but  such  discipline,  though  it  may  bring 
out  the  powers  of  ordinary  minds,  has  a  tendency  to 
suffocate,  rather  than  to  develope,  original  genius.  It 
was  universally  acknowledged  that,  in  the  litei'ary  con- 
test, the  Jansenists  were  completely  victorious.  To  the 
Jesuits  nothing  was  left  but  to  oppress  the  sect  which 
they  could  not  confute.  Lewis  the  Fourteentii  was 
now  their  chief  su])port.  His  conscience  had,  fi"om 
boyhood,  been  in  their  keeping ;  and  he  had  learned 
from  them  to  abhor  Jansenism  quite  as  much  as  he  ab- 
horred Protestantism,  and  very  much  more  than  he 
abhorred  Atheism.  Innocent  the  Eleventh,  on  the 
other  hand,  leaned  to  the  Jansenist  opinions.  The 
consequence  Avas,  that  the  Society  found  itself  in  a 
situation  never  contemplated  by  its  founder.  Tlie 
Jesuits  were  estranged  from  the  Supreme  Pontiff;  and 
they  were  closelv  allied  with  a  prince  who  proclaimed 
himself  the  champion  of  the  Gallican  liberties  and  the 
enemy  of  Ultramontane  pretensions.  The  Order  there- 
fore became  in  England  an  instrument  of  the  designs  of 
Lewis,  and  laboured,  with  a  success  which  the  Roman 
Catholics   afterwards    long   and    bitterly    deploivd,    tu 


338  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

widen  the  breach  between  the  King  and  the  Parlia- 
ment, to  thwart  the  Nuncio,  to  undermine  the  power 
of  the  Lord  Ti'easurer,  and  to  support  the  most  des- 
perate schemes  of  Tyrconnel. 

Thus  on  one  side  were  the  Hydes  and  the  wliole 
body  of  Tory  churclmien,  Powis  and  all  the  most  re- 
spectable noblemen  and  ge-ntlemen  of  the  King's  own 
faith,  the  States  General,  the  House  of  Austria,  and 
the  Pope.  On  the  other  side  were  a  few  Roman 
Catholic  adventurers,  of  broken  fortune  and  tainted 
reputation,  backed  by  France  and  by  the  Jesuits. 

The  chief  representative  of  the  Jesuits  at  Whitehall 
was  an  English  brother  of  the  Order,  who 

Father  Petre.   i       i       i       •  •  i  -tt-* 

had,  dunng  some  tmie,  acted  as  Viceprovm- 
cial,  who  had  been  long  regarded  by  James  with  pecu- 
liar favour,  and  who  had  lately  been  made  Clerk  of  the 
Closet.  This  man,  named  Edward  Petre,  was  de- 
scended from  an  honourable  family.  His  manners 
were  courtly :  his  speech  was  flowing  and  plausible ; 
but  he  was  weak  and  vain,  covetous  and  ambitious. 
Of  all  the  evil  counsellors  who  had  access  to  the  royal 
ear,  he  bore,  perhaps,  the  largest  part  in  the  ruin  of 
the  House  of  Stuart. 

The  obstinate  and  imperious  nature  of  the  King  gave 
The  King's     great  advantages  to  those  who  advised  him  to 

temper  and       ,        „  .    ,  ,  ,  .  ,  i         i  • 

opinions.  be  hmi,  to  yield  notnnig,  and  to  make  hmi- 
self  feared.  One  state  maxim  had  taken  possession  of 
his  small  understanding,  and  was  not  to  be  dislodged  by 
reason.  To  reason,  indeed,  he  was  not  in  the  habit  of 
attending.  His  mode  of  arguing,  if  it  is  to  be  so  called, 
was  one  not  uncommon  among  dull  and  stubborn  per- 
sons, who  are  accustomed  to  be  surrounded  by  their 
inferiors.  He  asserted  a  proposition  ;  and,  as  often  as 
wiser  people  ventured  respectfully  to  show  that  it  was 


1686.]  JAMES    THE   SECOND.  339 

erroneous,  he  asserted  it  again,  in  exactly  the  same 
words,  and  conceived  that,  by  doing  so,  he  at  once  dis- 
])0sed  of  all  objections.^  "  I  will  make  no  conces- 
sions," he  often  repeated  ;  "  my  father  made  conces- 
sion, and  he  was  beheaded."  ^  Even  if  it  had  been 
true  that  concession  had  been  fatal  to  Charles  the  First, 
a  man  of  sense  would  have  known  that  a  single  experi- 
ment is  not  sufficient  to  establish  a  general  rule  even  in 
sciences  much  less  complicated  than  the  science  of  gov- 
ernment ;  that,  since  the  beo-inning  of  the  world,  no 
two  political  experiments  were  ever  made  of  which  all 
the  conditions  were  exactly  alike  ;  and  that  the  only 
way  to  learn  civil  prudence  from  history  is  to  examine 
and  compare  an  immense  number  of  cases.  But,  if  the 
single  instance  on  which  the  King  relied  proved  any- 
thing, it  proved  that  he  was  in  the  wrong.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that,  if  Charles  had  frankly  made  to  the 
Short  Parliament,  which  met  in  the  spring  of  1640,  but 
one  half  of  the  concessions  which  he  made,  a  few 
months  later,  to  the  Long  Parliament,  he  would  have 
lived  and  died  a  powerful  King.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that,  if  he  had  refused 
to  make  any  concession  to  the  Long  Parliament,  and 
had  resorted  to  arms  in  defence  of  the  ship  money  and 
of  the  Star  Chamber,  he  would  have  seen,  in  the  hos- 
tile ranks,  Hyde  and  Falkland  side  by  side  with  Hollis 
and  Hampden.  It  would  indeed  be  more  correct  to 
say  that,  if  he  had  refused  to  make  any  concession,  he 
would  not  have  been  able  to  resort  to  arms  ;  for  not 
iwenty  Cavaliers  would  have  joined  his  standard.      It 

1  This  was  the  practice  of  Iiis  daughter  Anne;  and  Marlborougli  said 
that  she  had  learned  it  froin  licr  fatlier.  —  Vindication  of  the  Duchess  of 
Marllmroiitch. 

2  Down  t(i  tho  time  of  ilic  trial  tif  the  Bishops,  James  went  on  telling 
Adda  that  all  the  calaniitifs  of  Charles  the  First  were  "  per  la  troppa  in* 
duigenza."  —  Despatch  of  '^^^^^^   1688. 


340  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

was  to  his  large  concessions  alone  that  he  owed  the 
support  of  that  great  body  of  noblemen  and  gentlemen 
who  fought  so  long  and  so  gallantly  in  his  cause.  But 
it  would  have  been  useless  to  represent  these  things  to 
James. 

Another  fatal  delusion  had  taken  possession  of  his 
mind,  and  was  never  dispelled  till  it  had  ruined  him. 
He  firmly  believed  that,  do  what  he  might,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Church  of  England  would  act  up  to  their 
principles.  It  had,  he  knew,  been  proclaimed  from  ten 
thousand  pulpits,  it  had  been  solemnly  declared  by  the 
University  of  Oxford,  that  even  tyranny  as  fi'ightful  as 
that  of  the  most  depraved  of  the  Cassars  did  not  justify 
subjects  in  resisting  the  royal  authority ;  and  hence  he 
was  weak  enough  to  conclude  that  the  whole  body  of 
Tory  gentlemen  and  clergymen  would  let  him  plunder, 
oppress,  and  insult  them  without  lifting  an  arm  against 
him.  It  seems  strange  that  any  man  should  have 
passed  his  fiftieth  year  without  discovering  that  people 
sometimes  do  what  they  think  wrong :  and  James  had 
only  to  look  into  his  own  heart  for  abundant  proof  that 
even  a  strong  sense  of  religious  duty  will  not  always 
prevent  frail  human  beings  from  indulging  their  pas- 
sions in  defiance  of  divine  laws,  and  at  the  risk  of  awful 
penalties.  He  must  have  been  conscious  that,  though 
he  thought  adultery  sinful,  he  was  an  adulterer :  but 
nothing  could  convince  him  that  any  man  who  professed 
to  think  rebellion  sinful  woxild  ever,  in  any  extremity, 
ue  a  rebel.  The  Church  of  England  was,  in  his  view, 
a  passive  victim,  which  he  might,  without  danger,  out- 
rage and  torture  at  his  -pleasure ;  nor  did  he  ever  see 
his  error  till  the  Universities  were  preparing  to  coin 
their  plate  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  the  military 
chest  of  his  enemies,  and  till  a  Bishop,  long  renowned 
for  loyalty,  had  thrown  aside  the  cassock,  put  on  jack- 


1683]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  341 

boots,  and  taken  the  command  of  a  regiment  of  insur- 
gents. 

In  these  fatal  folHes  the  King  was  artfully  encour- 
aged by  a  minister  who  had  been  an  Exclu-  TheKingen- 
bionist,  and  who  still  called  himself  a  Prot-  ^"^^^Vby 
estant,  the  Earl  of  Sunderland.  The  motives  sunderiand. 
and  conduct  of  this  unprincipled  politician  have  often 
been  misrepresented.  He  was,  in  his  own  lifetime, 
accused  by  the  Jacobites  of  having,  even  before  the 
beginning  of  the  reign  of  James,  determined  to  bring 
about  a  revolution  in  favour  of  the  Prince  of  Orange, 
and  of  having,  with  that  view,  recommended  a  succes- 
sion of  outrages  on  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  constitu- 
tion of  the  realm.  This  idle  story  has  been  repeated 
down  to  our  own  days  by  ignorant  writers.  But  no 
well  informed  historian,  whatever  might  be  his  preju- 
dices, has  condescended  to  adopt  it :  for  it  rests  on  no 
evidence  whatever  ;  and  scarcely  any  evidence  would 
convince  reasonable  men  that  Sunderland  deliberately 
incurred  guilt  and  infamy  in  order  'to  bring  about  a 
change  by  which  it  was  clear  that  he  could  not  possi- 
bly be  a  gainer,  and  by  which,  in  fact,  he  lost  immense 
wealth  and  influence.  Nor  is  there  the  smallest  reason 
for  resorting  to  so  strange  a  hypothesis.  For  the  truth 
lies  on  the  surface.  Crooked  as  this  man's  course  was, 
the  law  which  determined  it  was  simj)le.  His  conduct 
is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  alternate  influence  of  cuj)idity 
and  fear  on  a  mind  highly  susceptible  of  botli  those  pas- 
nions,  and  quicksighted  rather  than  farsighted.  He 
wanted  more  power  and  more  money.  More  power 
he  could  obtain  only  at  Rochester's  expense  ;  and  the 
obvious  way  to  obtiiin  power  at  Rocliester's  expense 
was  to  encourage  the  dishke  wlu'cli  the  King  felt  for 
Rochester's  moderate  counsels.     Money  could  be  most 


312  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Oh.  VL 

easily  and  most  largely  obtained  from  the  court  of  Ver- 
sailles; and  Sunderland  was  eager  to  sell  himself  to 
that  court.  He  had  no  jovial  generous  vices.  He  cared 
little  for  wine  or  for  beauty  :  but  he  desired  riches 
with  an  ungovernable  and  insatiable  desire.  The  ])as- 
sion  for  play  raged  in  him  without  measure,  and  had 
not  been  tamed  by  ruinous  losses.  His  hereditary  for- 
tune was  ample.  He  had  long  filled  lucrative  posts, 
and  had  neglected  no  art  Avhich  could  make  them  more 
lucrative  :  but  his  ill  luck  at  the  hazard  table  was  such 
that  his  estates  were  daily  becoming  more  and  more 
encumbered.  In  the  hope  of  extricating  himself  from 
his  embarrassments,  he  beti'ayed  to  Barillon  all  the 
schemes  adverse  to  France  which  had  been  meditated 
in  the  English  cabinet,  and  hinted  that  a  Secretary  of 
State  could  in  such  times  render  services  for  which  it 
might  be  wise  in  Lewis  to  pay  largely.  The  A  mbassa- 
dor  told  his  master  that  six  thousand  guineas  was  the 
smallest  gratification  that  could  be  offered  to  so  hn- 
portant  a  minister-.  Lewis  consented  to  go  as  high  as 
twenty-five  thousand  crowns,  equivalent  to  about  five 
thousand  six  hundred  pounds  sterling.  It  was  agreed 
that  Sunderland  should  receive  this  sum  yearly,  and 
that  he  should,  in  return,  exert  all  his  influence  to  pre- 
vent the  reassembling  of  the  Parliament.^ 

He  joined  himself  therefore  to  the  Jesuitical  cabal, 
and  made  so  dexterous  an  use  of  the  influence  of  that 
cabal  that  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Halifax  in  the 
high  dignity  of  Lord  President  without  being  required 

1  Barillon,  Nov.  1|.  1685;  Lewis  to  Barillon,  ^^^--  In  a  highly 
curious  paper  which  was  written  in  1687,  almost  certaTnly  by  Botirepaux, 
and  which  is  now  in  the  French  archives,  Sunderland  is  described  thus:  — 
"  La  passion  qu'il  a  pour  le  jeu,  et  les  pertes  considerables  qu'il  y  fait, 
incommodent  fort  ses  affaires.  II  n'aime  pas  le  vin;  et  il  hait  lea 
femrnes." 


'686.]  .AMES   THE   SECOND.  343 

to  resign  the  far  more  active  and  lucrative  post  of  Sec- 
retary.^ He  felt,  however,  that  he  could  never  hope 
to  obtain  paramount  influence  in  the  court  while  he  was 
supposed  to  belong  to  the  Established  Church.  All 
religions  were  the  same  to  him.  In  private  circles, 
indeed,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  talking  with  profane 
contempt  of  the  most  sacred  things.  He  therefore  de- 
termined to  let  the  King  have  the  delight  and  glory  of 
effecting  a  conversion.  Some  management,  however, 
was  necessary.  No  man  is  utterly  witliout  regard  for 
the  opinion  of  his  fellow  creatures  ;  and  even  Sunder- 
land, though  not  very  sensible  to  shame,  flinched  from 
the  infamy  of  public  apostasy.  He  played  his  part  with 
rare  adroitness.  To  the  world  he  sliowed  himself  as 
a  Protestant.  'In  the  royal  closet  he  assumed  the  char- 
acter of  an  earnest  inquirer  after  truth,  who  was  almost 
persuaded  to  declare  himself  a  Roman  Catholic,  and 
who,  while  waiting  for  fuller  illumination,  was  disposed 
to  render  every  service  in  his  power  to  the  professors 
of  the  old  foith.  James,  who  was  never  very  discern- 
ing, and  who  in  religious  matters  was  absolutely  blind, 
suffered  himself,  notwithstandino;  all  that  he  had  seen 
of  human  knavery,  of  the  knavery  of  courtiers  as  a 
class,  and  of  the  knavery  of  Sunderland  in  particu- 
lar, to  be  duped  into  the  belief  that  divine  grace  had 
touched  the  most  false  and  callous  of  human  hearts. 
During  many  months  the  wily  minister  continued  to 
be  regarded  at  court  as  a  promising  catechumen,  with- 
out exhibiting  himself  to  the  public  in  the  character  of 
a  renccrade.'^ 


-» 


1  It  appears  from  (he  Council  Book  tliat  he  took  tis  place  as  president 
on  the  4tli  of  December,  1685. 

2  Bonropuux  was  not  so  easily  deceived  as  .Tames.  "  En  son  particulier 
il  (Sunderland)  n'en  profe.ssc  aucune  (religion),  et  en  parle  fort  librement. 
Ces  sortes  de  discours  seroient  en  execration  en  France.    Ici  ils  sont  ordi- 


844  HISTORY   OF   ENGLam^.  [Ch.  VI. 

He  early  suggested  to  the  King  tlie  expediency  of 
appointing  a  secret  committee  of  Roman  Catholics  to 
advise  on  all  matters  affecting  the  interests  of  their  re- 
ligion. This  committee  met  sometimes  at  Chiffinch's 
lodgings,  and  sometimes  at  the  official  apartments  of 
Sunderland,  who,  though  still  nominally  a  Protestant, 
was  admitted  to  all  its  deliberations,  and  soon  obtained 
a  decided  ascendency  over  the  other  members.  Every 
Friday  the  Jesuitical  cabal  dined  with  the  Secretary. 
The  conversation  at  table  was  free  ;  and  the  weak- 
nesses of  the  prince  whom  the  confederates  hoped  to 
manage  were  not  spared.  To  Petre  Sunderland  prom- 
ised a  Cardinal's  hat ;  to  Castelmaine  a  splendid  em- 
bassy to  Rome  ;  to  Dover  a  lucrative  command  in  the 
Guards  ;  and  to  Tyrconnel  high  employment  in  Ire- 
land. Thus  bound  together  by  the  strongest  ties  of 
interest,  these  men  addressed  themselves  to  the  task  of 
subverting  the  Treasurer's  power.^ 

There  were  two  Protestant  members  of  the  cabinet 
Perfidy  of  ^'^^^  ^"^o^^  ^o  decided  part  in  the  struggle. 
Jefifreys.  Jeffreys  was  at  this  time  tortured  by  a  cruel 
internal  malady  which  had  been  aggravated  by  intem- 
perance. At  a  dinner  which  a  wealthy  Alderman  gave 
to  some  of  the  leading  members  of  the  government,  the 
Lord  Treasurer  and  the  Lord  Chancellor  were  so  drunk 
that  they  stripped  themselves  almost  stark  naked,  and 
were  with  difficulty  prevented  from  climbing  up  a  sign- 
post to  drink  His  Majesty's  health.  The  pious  Treas- 
urer escaped  with  nothing  but  the  scandal  of  the  de- 
bauch :  but  the  Chancellor  brought  on  a  violent  fit  of 

naires  parmi  un  certain  nombre  de  gens  du  pais."  —  Bonrepaux  to  Seigne 
lay,  7-^-r  1687. 

1  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  74.  77.  Grig.  Mem.;  Sheridan 
MS.;  Barillon,  March  1|.  1686. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  345 

his  complaint.  His  life  was  for  some  time  thought  to 
be  in  serious  danger.  James  expressed  great  uneasi- 
ness at  the  thought  of  losing  a  minister  who  suited  him 
so  well,  and  said,  with  some  trntli,  that  the  loss  of  such 
a  man  could  not  be  easily  repaired.  Jeffreys,  when  he 
became  convalescent,  promised  his  snpport  to  both  the 
contending  parties,  and  waited  to  see  which  of  them 
w(mld  prove  victorious.  Some  curious  proofs  of  his 
duplicity  are  still  extant.  It  has  been  already  said  that 
the  two  French  agents  who  were  then  resident  in  Lon- 
don  had  divided  the  EnoHsh  court  between  them. 
Bonrepaux  was  constantly  with  Rochester  ;  and  Baril- 
lon  lived  with  Sunderland.  Lewis  was  informed  in 
the  same  week  by  Bonrej)aux  that  the  Chancellor  was 
entirely  with  the  Treasurer,  and  by  Barillon  that  the 
Chancellor  was  in  league  with  the  Secretary.^ 

Godolphin,  cautious  and  taciturn,  did  his  best  to  pre- 
serve  neutrality.     His   opinions    and  wishes 
were   undoubtedly  with   Rochester  ;  but  his 
office  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  be  in  constant  at- 
tendance on  the  Queen  ;   and  he  was  natu- 
rally unwilling  to  be  on  bad  terms  with  her. 
There  is   indeed  reason    to  believe  that  he   regarded 
her    with  an  attachment   more    romantic    than    often 
finds  place   in   the   hearts  of  veteran  statesmen ;  and 
circumstances,    which    it  is  now  necessary   to    relate, 
had  thrown  her  entirely  into  the  hands  of  the  Jesu- 
itical cabal.^ 

The  King,  stern  as  was  his  temper  and  grave  as  was 

1  TJeresbv's  Memoirs;  Luttrell'a  Diarv,  Feb.  2.  1085;  Barillon,  Feb.  Ju. 

Jnn.  28.      -,    "  Jnn.  US.  '  *>  >♦ 

T,-\— ,  ;   nonrc'paux,  ,,  .     ,-• 

2  Dartmouth's  note  on  Burnet,  i.  621.     In  a  contemporary  satire  it  is  re- 
marked tiiat  Godolphin 

"  Beats  tinio  with  politic  head,  and  :ill  approvos. 
Pleased  with  the  charge  of  the  Queen's  muff  and  gloves  " 


346  HISTORY    OP    ENGLAND.  L^h.  VI. 

his  deportment,  was  scarcely  less  under  the  influence 
Amours  of  of  female  attractions  than  his  more  lively  and 
the  King.  amiable  brother  had  been.  The  beauty,  in- 
deed, which  distinguished  the  favourite  ladies  of  Charles 
was  not  necessary  to  James.  Barbara  Palmer,  Eleanor 
Gwynn,  and  Louisa  de  Querouaille  were  among  the 
finest  women  of  their  time.  James,  when  young,  had 
surrendered  his  liberty,  descended  below  his  rank,  and 
incurred  the  displeasure  of  his  family  for  the  coarse 
features  of  Anne  Hyde.  He  had  soon,  to  the  great 
diversion  of  the  whole  court,  been  drawn  away  from  his 
plain  consort  by  a  plainer  mistress,  Arabella  Churchill. 
His  second  wife,  though  twenty  years  younger  than  him- 
self, and  of  no  unpleasing  face  or  figure,  had  fi-equent 
reason  to  complain  of  his  inconstancy.  But  of  all  his 
Catharine  iHicit  attachments  the  strongest  was  that  which 
sediey.  ^^^^^^  j^j^^^  ^^  Catharine  Sedley. 

This  woman  was  the  daughter  of  Sir  Charles  Sed- 
ley, one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  profligate  wits  of  the 
Restoration.  The  licentiousness  of  his  writings  is  not 
redeemed  by  much  grace  or  vivacity  ;  but  the  charms 
of  his  conversation  were  acknowledged  even  by  sober 
men  who  had  no  esteem  for  his  character.  To  sit  near 
him  at  the  theatre,  and  to  hear  his  criticisms  on  a  new 
play,  was  regarded  as  a  privilege.^  Dryden  had  done 
him  the  honour  to  make  him  a  principal  interlocutor  in 
the  Dialogue  on  Dramatic  Poesy.  The  morals  of  Sed- 
ley were  such  as,  even  in  that  age,  gave  great  scandal. 
He  on  one  occasion,  after  a  wild  revel,  exhibited  him- 
self without  a  shred  of  clothing  in  the  balcony  of  a 
tavern  near  Covent  Garden,  and  harangued  the  people 
who  were  passing  in  language  so  indecent  and  profane 
that  he  was  driven  m  by  a  shower  of  brickbats,  was 

1  Pepys,  Oct.  4.  1664. 


I 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  347 

prosecuted  for  a  misdemeanour,  was  sentenced  to  a 
heavy  fine,  and  was  reprimanded  by  tlie  Court  of 
King's  Bench  in  the  most  cutting  terms. ^  His  daughter 
had  inherited  his  abilities  and  his  impudence.  Personal 
charms  she  had  none,  with  the  exception  of  two  brill- 
iant eyes,  the  lustre  of  which,  to  men  of  delicate  taste, 
seemed  fierce  and  unfeminine.  Her  form  was  lean, 
her  countenance  haggard.  Charles,  though  he  liked 
her  conversation,  laughed  at  her  ugliness,  and  said  that 
the  priests  must  have  recommended  her  to  his  brother 
by  way  of  penance.  She  well  knew  that  she  was  not 
handsome,  and  jested  freely  on  her  own  homeliness. 
Yet,  with  strange  inconsistency,  she  loved  to  adorn  her- 
self magnificently,  and  drew  on  herself  much  keen  ridi- 
cule by  appearing  in  the  theatre  and  the  ring  plastered, 
painted,  clad  in  Brussels  lace,  glittering  with  diamonds, 
and  affectino;  all  the  graces  of  eighteen. ^ 

The  nature  of  her  influence  over  James  is  not  easily 
to  be  explained.  He  was  no  longer  young.  He  was  a 
religious  man  ;  at  least  he  was  willing  to  make  for  his 
religion  exertions  and  sacrifices  from  which  the  great 
majority  of  those  who  are  called  religious  men  would 
shrink.  It  seems  strange  that  any  attractions  should 
have  drawn  him  into  a  course  of  life  which  he  must 
have  regarded  as  highly  criminal  ;  and  in  this  case 
none  could  understand  where  the  attraction  lay.  Cath- 
arine herself  was  astonished  by  the  violence  of  his 
passion.  "  It  cannot  be  my  beauty,"  she  said ;  "  for 
he  must  see  that  I  have  none ;  and  it  cannot  be 
my  wit,  for  he  has  not  enough  to  know  that  I  have 
any." 

At  the  moment  of  the  King's  accession  a  sense  of  the 

1  Pepys,  July  1.  1663. 

2  See  Dorset's  satirical  lines  on  her. 


348  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

new  responsibility  which  lay  on  him  made  his  mind  for 
a  time  peculiarly  open  to  religious  impressions.     He 
formed  and  announced  many  good  resolutions,  spoke  in 
public  with  great  severity  of  the  impious  and  licentious 
manners  of  the  age,  and  in  private  assured  his  Queen 
and  his  confessor  that  he  would  see  Catharine  Sedley  no 
more.     He  wrote  to  his  mistress  intreating  her  to  quit 
the  apartments  which  she  occupied  at  Whitehall,  and  to 
go  to  a  house  in  Saint  James's  Square  which  had  been 
splendidly  furnished  for  her  at  his  expense.     He  at  the 
same  time  promised  to  allow  her  a  large  pension  from 
his  privy  purse.     Catharine,  clever,  strongminded,  in- 
trepid, and  conscious  of  her  power,  refused  to  stir.     In 
a  few  months  it  began  to  be  whispered  that  the  services 
of  Chiffinch  were  again  employed,  and  that  the  mistress 
frequently  passed  and  repassed  through  that  private 
door  through  which  Father  Huddleston  had  borne  the 
host  to  the  bedside  of  Charles.     The  King's  Protestant 
ministers  had,  it  seems,   conceived  a  hope  that  their 
master's  infatuation  for  this  woman  might  cure  him  of 
the  more  pernicious  infatuation  which  impelled  him  to 
attack  their  religion.     She  had  all  the  talents  which 
could  qualify  her  to  play  on  his  feelings,  to  make  game 
of  his  scruples,  to  set  before  him  in  a  strong  light  the 
difficulties  and  dangers  into  which  he  was  running  head- 
intrigues  of    long.    Rochester,  the  champion  of  the  Church, 
favour  of        excrtcd  himself  to  strengthen  her  influence. 
Sedley.  Ormoud,  who  is  popularly  regarded  as  the  per- 

sonification of  all  that  is  pui^e  and  highminded  in  the 
English  Cavalier,  encouraged  the  design.  Even  Lady 
Rochester  was  not  ashamed  to  cooperate,  and  to  cooper' 
ate  in  the  very  worst  way.  Her  office  was  to  direct  the 
jealousy  of  the  injured  wife  towards  a  young  lady  who 
was  perfectly  innocent.    The  whole  court  took  notice  of 


I 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  349 

the  coldness  and  rudeness  with  which  the  Queen  treated 
the  poor  girl  on  whom  suspicion  had  been  tin-own :  but 
the  cause  of  Her  Majesty's  ill  humour  was  a  mystery. 
For  a  time  the  intrigue  went  on  prosperously  and 
secretly.  Catharine  often  told  the  King  plainly  what 
the  Protestant  Lords  of  the  Council  only  dared  to  hint 
in  the  most  delicate  phrases.  His  crown,  she  said, 
was  at  stake :  the  old  dotard  Arundell  and  the  bluster- 
ing Tyrconnel  would  lead  him  to  his  ruin.  It  is  possi- 
ble that  her  caresses  might  have  done  what  the  united 
exhortations  of  the  Lords  and  the  Commons,  of  the 
House  of  Austria  and  the  Holy  See,  had  failed  to  do,  bvit 
for  a  strange  mishap  which  changed  the  whole  face  of 
attkirs.  James,  in  a  fit  of  fondness,  determined  to  make 
his  mistress  Countess  of  Dorchester  in  her  own  right. 
Catharine  saw  all  the  peril  of  such  a  step,  and  declined 
the  invidious  honour.  Her  lover  was  obstinate,  and 
himself  forced  the  patent  into  her  hands.  She  at  last 
accepted  it  on  one  condition,  Avhich  shows  her  confi- 
dence in  her  own  power  and  in  his  weakness.  She 
made  him  give  her  a  solemn  promise,  not  that  he  would 
never  quit  her,  but  that,  if  he  did  so,  he  would  himself 
announce  his  resolution  to  her,  and  grant  her  one  part- 
ing interview. 

As  soon  as  the  news  of  her  elevation  got  abroad,  the 
whole  palace  was  in  an  uproar.  The  warm  blood  of 
Italy  boiled  in  the  veins  of  the  Queen.  Proud  of  her 
youth  and  of  her  charms,  of  her  high  rank  and  of  her 
stainless  chastity,  she  could  not  without  agonies  of  grief 
and  rage  see  hei'sclf  deserted  and  insulted  for  such  a 
rival.  Rochester,  ])erliaps  remembering  how  patiently, 
after  a  short  stiiioi>Ie,  Catharine  of  Brajianza  had  con- 
sented  to  treat  the  mistresses  of  Charles  with  politeness, 
nad  expected  that,  after  a  little  complaining  and  jxmt- 


350  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

ing,  Mary  of  Modena  would  be  equally  submissive.  It 
was  not  so.  She  did  not  even  attempt  to  conceal  fi'om 
the  eyes  of  the  world  the  violence  of  her  emotions. 
Day  after  day  the  courtiers  who  came  to  see  her  dine 
observed  that  the  dishes  were  removed  untasted  fi'om 
the  table.  She  suffered  the  tears  to  stream  down  her 
cheeks  unconcealed  in  the  presence  of  the  whole  circle 
of  ministers  and  envoys.  To  the  King  she  spoke  with 
wild  vehemence.  "  Let  me  go,"  she  cried.  "  You 
have  made  your  woman  a  Countess  :  make  her  a  Queen. 
Put  my  crown  on  her  head.  Only  let  me  hide  myself 
in  some  convent,  where  I  may  never  see  her  more." 
Then,  more  soberly,  she  asked  him  how  he  reconciled 
his  conduct  to  his  religious  professions.  "You  are 
ready,"  she  said,  "  to  put  your  kingdom  to  hazard  for 
the  sake  of  your  soul ;  and  yet  you  are  throwing  away 
your  soul  for  the  sake  of  that  creature."  Father  Petre, 
on  bended  knees,  seconded  these  remonstrances.  It  was 
his  duty  to  do  so  ;  and  his  duty  was  not  the  less  sti'en- 
uoiisly  performed  because  it  coincided  with  his  interest. 
The  King  went  on  for  a  time  sinning  and  repenting. 
In  his  hours  of  remorse  his  penances  were  severe. 
Mary  treasured  up  to  the  end  of  her  life,  and  at  her 
death  bequeathed  to  the  convent  of  Chaillot,  the  scourge 
with  which  he  had  vigorously  avenged  her  wrongs  upon 
his  own  shoulders.  Nothino;  but  Catharine's  absence 
could  put  an  end  to  this  struggle  between  an  ignoble 
love  and  an  ignoble  superstition.  James  wrote,  implor- 
ing and  commanding  her  to  depart.  He  owned  that 
he  had  promised  to  bid  her  farewell  in  person.  "  But  I 
know  too  well,"  he  added,  "  the  power  which  you  have 
over  me.  I  have  not  strength  of  mind  enough  to  keep 
my  resolution  if  I  see  you."  He  offered  her  a  yacht  to 
convey  her  with  all  dignity  and  comfort  to  Flanders, 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  851 

and  thi-eatened  that  if  she  did  not  go  quietly  she  should 
be  sent  away  by  force.  She  at  one  time  worked  on  his 
feelings  by  pretending  to  be  ill.  Then  she  assTimed  the 
airs  of  a  mart}^',  and  impudently  proclaimed  herself  a 
sufferer  for  the  Protestant  religion.  Then  again  she 
adopted  the  style  of  John  Hampden.  She  defied  the 
King  to  remove  her.  She  would  try  the  right  with 
him.  While  the  Great  Charter  and  the  Habeas  Corpus 
Act  were  the  law  of  the  land,  she  would  live  where  she 
jileased.  "  And  Flanders,"  she  cried  ;  "  never  !  I 
have  learned  one  thing  from  my  friend  the  Duchess  of 
Mazarin  ;  and  that  is  never  to  trust  myself  in  a  country 
where  there  are  convents."  At  length  she  selected 
Ireland  gs  the  place  of  her  exile,  probably  because  the 
brother  of  her  patron  Rochester  was  viceroy  there. 
Afler  many  delays  she  departed,  leaving  the  victory  to 
the  Queen. 1 

The  history  of  this  extraordinary  intrigue  would  be 
imperfect,  if  it  were  not  added  that  there  is  still  extant 
a  religious  meditation,  written  by  the  Treasurer,  with 
his  own  hand,  on  the  very  same  day  on  which  the  intel- 
ligence of  his  attempt  to  govern  his  master  by  means 
of  a  concubine  was  despatched  by  Bonrepaux  to  Ver- 
sailles. No  composition  of  Ken  or  Leighton  breathes  a 
spirit  of  more  fervent  and  exalted  piety  than  this  effu- 
sion. Hypocrisy  cannot  be  suspected  :  for  the  paper 
was  evidently  meant  only  for  the  writer's  own  eye,  and 
was  not  published  till  he  had  been  more  than  a  century 

1  The  chief  materials  for  the  liistory  of  this  intrigue  are  tlie  despatches 
ef  I$arillou  and  Bonrepaux  at  tlie  beginning  of  tlie  year  1G86.    See  BarilUm, 

T^TT  '  Feb  7  ^^^'  A''  ^^^-  l'?"  r^^-  M ■'  *"^  Honrepaux  nnder  the  first 
four  dates;  Evelyn's  Diary,  .Ian.  19.;  Reresby's  Memoirs;  Rurnet,  i.  682.; 
Sheridan  MS.;  Chaillot  AIS.;  Adda's  Despatches,  ^"'\^  and  ^-^'-^^  1086. 

r  fh.  ' .  r  en.  o. 

Adda  writes  like  a  pious,  but  weak  and  ignorant  man.  He  appears  to  have 
known  nothing  of  .James's  past  life. 

VOL  11.  23 


352  HISTORY   OF    ENGLAND.  fCii.  VI 

in  his  grave.  So  much  is  history  stranger  than  fiction  ; 
and  so  true  is  it  that  nature  has  caprices  wliicli  art 
dai-es  not  imitate.  A  dramatist  would  scarcely  venture 
to  bring  on  the  stage  a  grave  prince,  in  the  decline  of 
life,  ready  to  sacrifice  his  crown  in  order  to  serve  the 
interests  of  his  religion,  indefatigable  in  making  prose- 
lytes, and  yet  deserting  and  insulting  a  virtuous  wife 
who  had  youth  and  beauty  for  the  sake  of  a  profligate 
])aramour  who  had  neither.  Still  less,  if  possible,  would 
a  dramatist  venture  to  introduce  a  statesman  stooping 
to  tlie  wicked  and  shameful  part  of  a  procurer,  and 
calling  in  his  wife  to  aid  him  in  that  dishonourable  office, 
yet,  in  his  moments  of  leisure,  retiring  to  his  closet, 
and  there  secretly  pouring  out  his  soul  to  h^  God  in 
})enitent  tears  and  devout  ejaculations.^ 

The  Treasurer  soon  found  that,  in  using  scandalous 
Decline  of       mcaus  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  laudable 

Kochester's  i     i        i       i  . 

influeace.  eud,  he  had  committed,  not  only  a  crime,  but 
a  folly.  The  Queen  was  now  his  enemy.  She  affected, 
indeed,  to  listen  with  civility  while  the  Hydes  excused 
their  recent  conduct  as  well  as  they  could  ;  and  she 
occasionally  pretended  to  use  her  influence  in  their 
favour  :  but  she  must  have  been  more  or  less  than 
woman  if  she  had  really  forgiven  the  conspiracy  which 
had  been  formed  against  her  dignity  and  her  domestic 

1  The  meditation  bears  date  -  ,  "  168|..  Bonrepaux,  in  his  despatch 
of  the  same  day,  says,  "  L'intrigue  avoit  ^te  conduite  par  Milord  Rochester 
et  sa  feniitie.  .  .  .  Leur  projet  6toit  de  faire  gouverner  le  Roy  d'Angleterre 
par  la  nouvelle  conitesse.  lis  s'^toient  assures  d'elle."  While  Bonrepaux 
was  writing  thus,  Rochester  was  writing  as  follows:  "  Oh  God,  teach  me  so 
to  number  my  days  that  I  may  apply  my  heart  unto  wisdom.  Teach  me 
to  number  the  days  that  I  have  spent  in  vanitj'  and  idleness,  and  teach  me 
to  number  those  that  I  have  spent  in  sin  and  wickedness.  Oh  God,  teach 
me  to  number  the  days  of  my  affliction  too,  and  to  give  thanks  for  all  that 
is  come  to  me  from  thy  hand.  Teach  me  likewise  to  number  the  dajiB 
of  this  world's  greatness,  of  which  I  have  so  great  a  share;  and  teach  me  to 
look  upon  them  as  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit." 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  SoS 

hapjdness  by  the  family  of  her  husband's  first  wife. 
The  Jesuits  strongly  represented  to  the  King  the  dan- 
ger which  he  had  so  narrowl}^  escaped.  His  rejmtation, 
they  said,  his  peace,  his  soul,  had  been  put  in  peril  by 
the  machinations  of  his  prime  minister.  The  Nuncio, 
who  would  gladly  have  counteracted  the  influence  of 
the  violent  party,  and  cooperated  with  the  moderate 
members  of  the  cabinet,  could  not  honestly  or  decently 
separate  himself  on  this  occasion  from  Father  Petre. 
James  himself,  when  parted  by  the  sea  from  the  channs 
which  had  so  stronglv  fascinated  him,  could  not  but 
regard  with  resentment  and  contempt  those  who  had 
sought  to  govern  him  by  means  of  his  vices.  What 
had  passed  must  have  had  the  effect  of  raising  his  own 
Church  in  his  esteem,  and  of  lowerino;  the  Church  of 
England.  The  Jesuits,  whom  it  was  the  fashion  to 
represent  as  the  most  unsafe  of  spiritual  guides,  as 
sophists  who  refined  away  the  whole  system  of  evan- 
gelical morality,  as  sycophants  who  owed  their  influence 
chiefly  to  the  indulgence  with  which  they  treated  the 
sins  of  the  great,  had  reclaimed  him  from  a  life  of  guilt 
by  rebukes  as  sharp  and  bold  as  those  which  David  had 
heard  from  Nathan  and  Herod  from  the  Baptist.  On 
the  other  hand,  zealous  Protestants,  whose  favourite 
theme  was  the  laxity  of  Popish  casuists  and  the  wicked- 
ness of  doing  evil  that  good  might  come,  had  attempted 
to  obtain  advantages  for  their  own  Church  in  a  way 
which  all  Christians  regarded  as  highly  criminal.  The 
victory  of  the  cabal  of  evil  counsellors  was  therefore 
complete.  The  King  looked  coldly  on  Rochester.  The 
courtiers  and  foreign  ministers  soon  perceived  that  the 
Lord  Treasurer  was  prime  minister  only  in  name.  He 
continued  to  offer  his  advice  daily,  and  had  the  mortifi- 
cation to  find  it  daily  rejected.     Yet  he  could  not  pre- 


854  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  ICh.  VI. 

vail  on  himself  to  I'eHnquish  the  outward  show  of  power 
and  the  emoluments  which  he  directly  and  indirectly 
derived  from  his  great  place.  He  did  his  best,  there- 
fore, to  conceal  his  vexations  from  the  public  eye.  But 
his  violent  passions  and  his  intemperate  habits  disqual- 
ified him  for  the  part  of  a  dissembler.  His  gloomy 
looks,  when  he  came  out  of  the  council  chamber, 
showed  how  little  he  was  pleased  with  what  had  passed 
at  the  board  ;  and,  when  the  bottle  had  gone  round 
freely,  words  escaped  him  which  betrayed  his  uneasi- 
ness.^ 

He  might,  indeed,  well  be  uneasy.  Indiscreet  and 
unpopular  measures  followed  one  another  in  rapid  suc- 
cession. All  thought  of  returning  to  the  policy  of  the 
Triple  Alliance  was  abandoned.  The  King  explicitly 
avowed  to  the  ministers  of  those  continental  powers 
with  which  he  had  lately  intended  to  ally  himself,  that 
all  his  views  had  undergone  a  change,  and  that  Eng- 
land was  still  to  be,  as  she  had  been  under  his  grand- 
father, his  father,  and  his  brother,  of  no  account  in 
Europe.  "  I  am  in  no  condition,"  he  said  to  the  Span- 
ish Ambassador,  "  to  trouble  myself  about  what  passes 
abroad.  It  is  my  resolution  to  let  foreign  affairs  take 
their  course,  to  establish  my  authority  at  home,  and  to 
do  something  for  my  religion."  A  few  days  later  he 
announced  the  same  intentions  to  the  States  General.^ 
From  that  time  to  the  close  of  his  ignominious  reisn,  he 
made  no  serious  effort  to  escape  fi-om  vassalage,  though, 
to  the  last,  he  could  never  hear,  without  transports  of 
rage,  that  men  called  him  a  vassal. 

1  "  Je  vis  Milord  Rochester  comme  il  sortoit  du  conseil  fort  chagrin;  et, 
Bur  la  fin  du  souper,  il  liii  en  ^chappe  quelque  chose."  Bonrepaux,  Feb. 
^.  1686.     See  also  Barillon,  March  JL,  JL, 

•■i  Barillon,  "Ji,  April  il    1686. 

'     Apri     I.  '  22 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  355 

The  two  events  which  proved  to  the  public  that  Sxm- 
derland  and  Sunderland's  party  were  victorious  were 
the  prorogation  of  the  Parliament  from  February  to 
May,  and  the  departure  of  Castelmaine  for  Rome  with 
the  appointments  of  an  Ambassador  of  the  highest 
lank.i 

Hitherto  all  the  business  of  the  English  oovernment 
at  the  papal  court  had  been  transacted  by  John  Caryl. 
This  gentleman  was  known  to  his  contemporaries  as  a 
man  of  fortune  and  fashion,  and  as  the  author  of  two 
successful  plays,  a  tragedy  in  rhyme  which  had  been 
made  popular  by  the  action  and  recitation  of  Betterton, 
and  a  comedy  which  owes  all  its  value  to  scenes  bor- 
rowed from  Moliere.  These  pieces  have  long  been  for- 
gotten ;  but  what  Caryl  could  not  do  for  himself  has 
been  done  for  him  by  a  more  powerful  genius.  Half 
a  line  in  the  Rape  of  the  Lock  has  made  his  name  im- 
mortal. 

Caryl,  who  was,  like  all  the  other  respectable  lioman 
Catholics,  an  enemy  to  violent  courses,  had  casteim.une 
acquitted  himself  of  his  delicate  errand  at  K-me! 
Rome  with  good  sense  and  good  feeling.  The  business 
confided  to  him  was  well  done  ;  but  he  assumed  no 
pubhc  character,  and  carefully  avoided  all  display.  His 
mission,  therefore,  ])ut  the  government  to  scarcely  any 
charge,  and  excited  scarcely  any  munnurs.  His  place 
was  now  most  unwisely  su])plied  by  a  costly  and  osten- 
tatious embassy,  offensive  in  the  highest  degree  to  the 
people  of  England,  and  by  no  means  welcome  to  the 
court  of  Rome.  Castelmaine  had  it  in  chame  to  de- 
mand  a  Cardinal's  hat  for  his  confederate  Petre. 

About  the  same   time  the  King  began  to  show,  in 

1  London  Gazette,  Feb.  11.  1C8A;  Luttrell's  Diary,  Feb.  8.;  Van  Leeu 
fi  ;n,  Feb.  ^n^. ;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  75.  Orig.  Mem. 


356  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

an   unequivocal  manner,   the  feeling  which  he  really 
The  iiugue     entertained  towards  the  banished  Hupuenots. 

nots  ill  treat;  _  _  o 

ed  by  James  While  he  liad  still  hoped  to  cajole  his  Par- 
liament into  submission  and  to  become  the  head  of 
an  European  coalition  against  France,  he  had  affected 
to  blame  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  and  to 
pity  the  unhappy  men  whom  persecution  had  driven 
from  their  country.  He  had  caused  it  to  be  announced 
that,  at  every  church  in  the  kingdom,  a  collection 
would  be  made  under  his  sanction  for  their  benefit. 
A  proclamation  on  this  subject  had  been  drawn  up 
in  terms  which  might  have  wounded  the  pride  of  a 
sovereign  less  sensitive  and  vainglorious  than  Lewis. 
But  all  was  now  changed.  The  principles  of  the  treaty 
of  Dover  were  again  the  principles  of  the  foreign 
policy  of  England.  Ample  apologies  were  therefore 
made  for  the  discourtesy  with  which  the  English  gov- 
ei'nraent  had  acted  towards  France  in  showinjr  favour 
to  exiled  Frenchmen.  The  proclamation  which  had 
displeased  Lewis  was  recalled.^  The  Huguenot  minis- 
ters were  admonished  to  speak  with  reverence  of  their 
oppressor  in  their  public  discourses,  as  they  would 
answer  it  at  their  peril.  James  not  only  ceased  to 
express  commiseration  for  the  sufferers,  but  declared 
that  he  believed  them  to  harbour  the  worst  designs, 
and  owned  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  an  error  in  coun- 
tenancing them.  One  of  the  most  eminent  of  the  refu- 
gees, John  Claude,  had  published  on  the  Continent  a 
small  volume  in  which  he  described  with  great  force 
the  sufferings  of  his  brethi-en.  Barillon  demanded  that 
uome  opprobrious  mark  should  be  put  on  his  book. 
James  complied,  and  in  fidl  council  declared  it  to  be 
his  pleasure  that  Claude's  libel  should  be  burned  by  the 

1  Van  Leeuwen,  ^^  1686. 


I 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  357 

hangman  before  the  Royal  Exchange.  Even  Jeffreys 
was  startled,  and  ventured  to  represent  that  such  a 
proceeding  was  without  example,  that  the  book  was 
wi'itten  in  a  foreign  tongue,  that  it  had  been  printed 
at  a  foreign  press,  that  it  related  entirely  to  transac- 
tions which  had  taken  place  in  a  foreign  country,  and 
that  no  English  government  had  ever  animadverted  on 
such  works.  James  would  not  suffer  tlie  question  to 
be  discussed.  "  My  resolution,"  he  said,  "  is  taken. 
It  has  become  the  fashion  to  treat  Kings  disrespect- 
fully ;  and  they  must  stand  by  each  other.  One  King 
should  always  take  another's  part :  and  I  have  par- 
ticular reasons  for  showing  this  respect  to  the  King 
of  France."  There  was  silence  at  the  board.  The 
order  was  forthwith  issued;  and  Chiude's  pamphlet 
Avas  committed  to  the  flames,  not  without  the  deep 
murmurs  of  many  who  had  always  been  reputed  steady 
loyalists.^ 

The  promised  collection  was  long  put  off  under  vari- 
ous pretexts.  The  King  would  gladly  have  broken  his 
word  ;  but  it  was  pledged  so  solemnly  that  he  could 
not  for  very  shame  retract.''^  Nothing,  however,  which 
could  cool  the  zeal  of  congregations  was  omitted.  It 
had  been  expected  that,  according  to  the  practice  usual 
on  such  occasions,  the  people  would  be  exhorted  to 
libei'ality  fi'om  the  pulpits.  But  James  was  deter- 
mined not  to  tolerate  declamations  against  his  religi(m 
and  his  ally.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  was 
therefore  commanded  to  infonn  the  clergy  that  they 

1  Barillon,  ^~^',  May  ^3^.  1G8G ;  Van  Citters,  May  ^T^. ;  Evelyn's  Uiarj-, 
M.iy  5.;  Luttrell's  Ukiry  of  the  same  date;  Privy  Council  Book,  May  2. 

2  Ladv  Russell  to  Dr.  Fitzwillinm,  .Tan.  22.  ICSO  :  l'.arilIon,  Feb.  X&  ^''-f-^' 
1686.  "  Ce  prince  fenioiirne,"  says  Biirillon,  "  une  f^rande  aversion  pour 
eux,  et  aurait  bien  voulii  sc.  dispenser  de  la  coUecte,  qui  est  ordoun^  en 
leur  faveur:  mais  il  n'a  pas  cm  (jue  cela  (lit  possible." 


858  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Cii    VI. 

must  merely  read  the  brief,  and  must  not  presume  to 
preach  on  the  sufFermgs  of  tlie  French  Protestants. ^ 
Nevertheless  the  contributions  were  so  laro-e  tliat,  after 
all  deductions,  the  sum  of  forty  thousand  pounds  was 
paid  into  the  Chamber  of  London.  Perhaps  none 
of  the  munificent  subscriptions  of  our  own  age  has 
borne  so  great  a  proportion  to  the  means  of  the 
nation.^ 

The  King  was  bitterly  mortified  by  the  large  amount 
of  the  collection  which  had  been  made  in  obedience  to 
his  own  call.  He  knew,  he  said,  what  all  this  liberality 
meant.  It  was  mere  Whiggish  spite  to  himself  and  his 
religion.^  He  had  already  resolved  that  the  money 
should  be  of  no  use  to  those  M'hom  the  donors  wished 
to  benefit.  He  had  been,  during  some  weeks,  in  close 
communication  with  the  French  embassy  on  this  sub- 
ject, and  had,  with  the  approbation  of  the  court  of 
Versailles,  determined  on  a  course  which  it  is  not  very 
easy  to  reconcile  with  those  principles  of  toleration  to 
which  he  afterwards  pretended  to  be  attached.  The 
refugees  were  zealous  for  the  Calvinistic  discipline  and 
woi'ship.  James  therefore  gave  orders  that  none  should 
receive  a  crust  of  bread  or  a  basket  of  coals  who  did 
not  first  take  the  sacrament  according-  to  the  Ano-lican 
ritual.*  It  is  strange  that  this  inhospitable  rule  should 
have  been  devised  by  a  prince  who  afii^cted  to  consider 
the  Test  Act  as  an  outrao;e  on  the  rights  of  conscience : 

1  Barillon,  ^^-  1686. 

'    Mar.  4. 

2  Account  of  the  commissioners,  dated  March  15.  1688. 

3  "  Le  Roi  d'Angleterre  connait  bieii  que  les  gens  mal  intentionn^s  pour 
hv  sont  les  plus  prompts  et  les  plus  disposes  a  donner  considerablement.  . . . 
Sa  Majesty  Britannique  connoit  bien  qu'il  auroit  et6  a  propos  de  ne  point 
ordonner  de  coUecte,  et  que  les  gens  mal  iuteiitionnt's  contre  la  religion 
Catholique  et  contre  lui  se  servent  de  cette  occasion  pour  temoigner  leut 
z61e."  —Barillon,  April  i|.  1686. 

*  Barillon,  Feb.^.,  ^^^'  April  .^.  1686;  Lewis  to  Barillon,  Mar.  ^ 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  359 

for,  however  unjustifiable  it  may  be  to  establish  a  sacra- 
mental test  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  whether  men 
are  fit  for  civil  and  military  office,  it  is  surely  much 
more  unjustifiable  to  establish  a  sacramental  test  for 
the  purpose  of  ascertaining  whether,  in  their  'extreme 
distress,  they  are  fit  objects  of  charity.  Nor  had  James 
the  plea  Avhich  may  be  urged  in  extenuation  of  the  guilt 
of  almost  all  other  persecutors :  for  the  religion  which 
he  commanded  the  refugees  to  profess,  on  pain  of  being 
left  to  starve,  was  not  his  own  religion.  His  conduct 
towards  them  was  therefore  less  excusable  than  that  of 
Lewis  :  for  Lewis  oppressed  them  in  the  hope  of  bring- 
ing them  over  from  a  damnable  heresy  to  the  true 
Church  :  James  oppressed  them  only  for  the  purpose 
of  forcing  them  to  apostatize  from  one  damnable  heresy 
to  another. 

Several  Commissioners,  of  whom  the  Chancellor  was 
one,  had  been  appointed  to  dispense  the  public  alms. 
When  they  met  for  the  first  time,  Jeffreys  announced 
the  royal  pleasure.  The  refugees,  he  said,  were  too 
generally  enemies  of  monarchy  and  episcopacy.  If 
they  wished  for  relief,  they  must  become  members  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  must  take  the  sacrament 
from  the  hands  of  his  chaplain.  Many  exiles,  who 
had  come  full  of  gratitude  and  hope  to  apply  for  suc- 
cour, heard  their  sentence,  and  went  brokenhearted 
away.i 

May  was  now  approaching  ;  and  that  month  had  been 
fixed  for  the  meeting  of  the  Houses  :  but  they  ih©  dispeng- 
were  again  prorogued  to  November.'^     It  was  '""^  ''°^^"' 
not  strange  that  the  King  did  not  wish  to  meet  them  : 

1  Barillon,  April  ^.  1G86;  Lad}'  Russell  to  Dr.  Fitavilliam,  April  14 
•*  He  sent  away  many,"  she  says,  "  with  sad  hearts." 
8  London  Gazette  of  May  13.  1686. 


360  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

for  he  had  determined  to  adopt  a  policy  which  he  knew 
to  be,  in  the  highest  degree,  odious  to  them.  From  his 
predecessors  he  had  inherited  two  prerogatives,  of  which 
the  Hmits  had  never  been  defined  with  strict  accuracy, 
and  which,  if  exerted  without  any  hmit,  would  of  them- 
selves have  sufficed  to  overturn  the  whole  polity  of  the 
State  and  of  the  Church.  These  were  the  dispensing 
power  and  the  ecclesiastical  supremacy.  By  means 
of  the  dispensing  power  the  King  proposed  to  admit 
Roman  Catholics,  not  merely  to  civil  and  military, 
but  to  spiritual,  offices.  By  means  of  the  ecclesiastical 
supremacy  he  hoped  to  make  the  Anglican  clergy 
his  instruments  for  the  destruction  of  their  own  re- 
ligion. 

This  scheme  developed  itself  by  degrees.  It  was  not 
thought  safe  to  begin  by  granting  to  the  whole  Roman 
Catholic  body  a  dispensation  from  all  statutes  imposing 
penalties  and  tests.  For  nothing  was  more  fully  estab- 
lished than  that  such  a  dispensation  was  illegal.  The 
Cabal  had,  in  1672,  put  forth  a  general  Declaration  of 
Indulgence.  The  Commons,  as  soon  as  they  met,  had 
protested  against  it.  Charles  the  Second  had  ordered 
it  to  be  cancelled  in  his  presence,  and  had,  both  by  his 
own  mouth  and  by  a  written  message,  assured  the 
Houses  that  the  step  which  had  caused  so  much  com- 
plaint should  never  be  drawn  into  precedent.  It  would 
have  been  difficult  to  find  in  all  the  Inns  of  Court  a 
barrister  of  reputation  to  argue  in  defence  of  a  prerog- 
ative which  the  Sovereign,  seated  on  his  throne  in  full 
Parliament,  had  solemnly  renounced  a  few  years  before. 
But  it  was  not  quite  so  clear  that  the  King  might  not, 
on  special  grounds,  grant  exemptions  to  individuals  by 
name.  The  first  object  of  James,  therefore,  was  to  ob- 
tain from  the  courts  of  common  law  an  acknowledc;- 


1686.]  '         JAMES   THE   SECOND.  ,  361 

ment  that,  to  this  extent  at  least,  he  possessed  the  dis- 
pensing power. 

But,  though  his  pretensions  wei'e  moderate  when 
compared  with  those  whicli  he  put  forth  a  Dismission 
few  months  later,  he  soon  found  that  he  had  Judges. 
asainst  him  ahnost  the  whole  sense  of  Westminster 
Hall.  Four  of  the  Judges  gave  him  to  understaiid 
that  they  could  not,  on  this  occasion,  serve  his  pur- 
pose ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  all  the  four  were  vio- 
lent Tories,  and  that  among  them  were  men  who  had 
accompanied  Jeffreys  on  the  Bloody  Circuit,  and  who 
had  been  consenting  to  the  death  of  Cornish  and  of 
Elizabeth  Gaunt.  Jones,  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  Com- 
mon Pleas,  a  man  who  had  never  before  shrunk  from 
any  drudgery,  however  cruel  or  servile,  now  held  in 
the  royal  closet  language  which  might  have  become  the 
lips  of  the  purest  magistrates  in  our  history.  He  was 
plainly  told  that  he  must  either  give  up  his  opinion  or 
his  place,  "  For  my  place,"  he  answered,  "  I  care  little. 
I  am  old  and  worn  out  in  tlie  service  of  the  crown  ;  but 
I  am  mortified  to  find  that  your  Majesty  thinks  me  ca- 
pable of  giving  a  judgment  whicli  none  but  an  ignorant 
or  a  dishonest  man  could  give."  "  I  am  determined," 
said  the  King,  "  to  have  twelve  Judges  who  will  be 
all  of  my  mind  as  to  this  matter."  "  Your  Majesty," 
answered  Jones,  "  may  find  twelve  Judges  of  your 
mind,  but  hardly  twelve  lawj'^ers."  ^  He  was  dis- 
missed together  with  Montague,  Chief  Baron  of  the 
Exchequer,  and  two  puisne  Judges,  Neville  and  Charl- 
ton. One  of  the  new  Judges  was  Chi-ist(^j>her  jNlilton, 
younger  brother  of  the  great  poet.  Of  Christopher 
little  is  known  except  that,  in  the  time  of  the  civil  war, 
he  had  been  a  Royalist,  and  that  he  now,  in  his  old  age, 
1  Reresby's  Memoirs;  Eachard,  iii.  797.;  Kenaet,  iii.  451. 


362.  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VX 

leaned  towards  Popery.  It.  does  not  appear  that  he 
was  ever  formally  reconciled  to  the  Church  of  Rome : 
but  he  certainly  had  scruples  about  communicating 
with  the  Church  of  England,  and  had  therefore  a 
strong  interest  in  supporting  the  dispensing  power.^ 

The  King  found  his  counsel  as  refractory  as  his 
Judges.  The  first  barrister  who  learned  that  he  was 
expected  to  defend  the  dispensing  power  was  the  So- 
licitor General,  Heneage  Finch.  He  peremptorily  re- 
fused, and  w^as  turned  out  of  office  on  the  followino- 
day.2  The  Attorney  General,  Sawyer,  was  ordered  to 
draw  warrants  authorising  members  of  the  Chui'ch  of 
Rome  to  hold  benefices  belonging  to  the  Church  of 
England.  Sawyer  had  been  deeply  concerned  in  some 
of  the  harshest  and  most  unjustifiable  prosecutions  of 
that  age ;  and  the  Whigs  abhorred  him  as  a  man 
stained  with  the  blood  of  Russell  and  Sidney :  but  on 
this  occasion  he  showed  no  want  of  honesty  or  of  res- 
olution. "  Sir,"  said  he,  "  this  is  not  merely  to  dis- 
pense with  a  statute ;  it  is  to  annul  the  whole  statute 
law  from  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  to  the  present  day. 
I  dare  not  do  it ;  and  I  implore  Your  Majesty  to  con- 
sider whether  such  an  attack  upon  the  rights  of  the 
Church  be  in  accordance  with  your  late  gracious  prom- 
ises." 2  Sawyer  would  have  been  instantly  dismissed 
as  Finch  had  been,  if  the  government  could  have  found 
a  successor :  but  this  was  no  easy  matter.  It  was  ne- 
cessary for  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  the  crown 
that  one  at  least  of  the  crown  lawyers  should  be  a  man 
of  learning,  ability,  and  expenence  ;  and  no  such  man 


1  London  Gazette,  April  22.  and  29.  1686;  Barillon,  April  i|.. ;  Evelyn's 
Diary,  June  2.;  Luttrcll,  June  8.;  Dodd's  Cliurch  History. 

2  North's  Life  of  Guildford,  288. 
'  Reresby's  Memoirs. 


1686.J  JaMES    TUE    SECOND.  363 

was  willing  to  defend  the  dispensing  power.  The  At- 
torney General  was  therefore  permitted  to  retain  his 
place  during  some  months.  Thomas  Powis,  an  insig- 
nificant man,  who  had  no  qualification  for  high  em- 
l)!oyment  except  servility,   was  appointed  Solicitor. 

The  preliminary  arrangements  were  now  complete. 
There  was  a  Solicitor  General  to  argue  for  case  of  sir 
the  dispensing  power,  and  a  bench  of  Judges  uaies. 
to  decide  in  favour  of  it.     The  question  was  therefore 
speedily  brought  to  a  hearing.     Sir  Edward  Hales,  a 
gentleman  of  Kent,  had  been  converted  to  Popery  in 
days  when  it  was  not  safe  for  any  man  of  note  openly 
to  declare  himself  a  Papist.     He  had  kept  his  secret, 
and,  when  questioned,  had  affirmed  that  he  was  a  Prot- 
estant with  a  solemnity  which  did  little  credit  to  his 
principles.      When  James   had  ascended  the   throne, 
disguise  was  no  longer  necessary.     Sir  Edward  pub- 
licly apostatized,  and  was  rewarded  with  the  command 
of  a  regiment  of  foot.     He  had  held  his  commission 
more  than  three  months  without  taking  the  sacrament. 
He  was  therefore  liable  to  a  penalty  of  five  hundred 
pounds,  which  an  informer  might  recover  by  action  of 
debt.     A  menial  servant  was  employed  to  bring  a  suit 
for  this  sum  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.     Sir  Ed- 
ward did  not  dispute  the  facts  alleged  against  him,  but 
pleaded  that  he  had  letters  patent  authorising  him  to 
hold   his  commission    notwithstanding   the    Test  Act. 
The  plaintiff  demurred,   that  is  to  say,  admitted  Sir 
Edward's  plea  to  be  true  in  fact,  but  denied  that  it  was 
a  sufficient  answer.     Thus  was  raised  a  simple  issue  of 
law  to  be  decided  by  the  court.     A  barrister,  who  was 
notoriously  a  tool  of  the  government,  appeared  for  the 
mock  plaintiff,  and  made  some  feeble  objections  to  the 
defendant's  plea.     The  new  Solicitor  General  replied. 


364  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

The  Attorney  General  took  no  part  in  the  proceedings. 
Judgment  was  given  by  the  Lord  Chief  Justice,  Sir 
Edward  Herbert.  He  announced  tliat  he  had  sub- 
mitted the  question  to  all  the  twelve  Judges,  and  that,  in 
the  opinion  of  eleven  of  them,  the  King  might  lawfully 
dispense  with  penal  statutes  in  particular  cases,  and  for 
special  reasons  of  grave  importance.  The  single  dis- 
sentient, Baron  Street,  was  not  removed  from  his  place. 
He  was  a  man  of  morals  so  bad  that  his  own  relations 
shrank  from  him,  and  that  the  Prince  of  Orange,  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution,  was  advised  not  to  see  him. 
The  character  of  Street  makes  it  impossible  to  believe 
that  he  would  have  been  more  scrupulous  than  his 
brethren.  The  character  of  James  makes  it  impossi- 
ble to  believe  that  a  refractory  Baron  of  the  Exchequer 
would  have  been  permitted  to  retain  his  post.  There 
can,  therefore,  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  dissenting 
Judge  was,  like  the  plaintiff  and  the  plaintiff's  counsel, 
acting  collusively.  It  was  important  that  there  should 
be  a  great  preponderance  of  authority  in  favour  of  the 
dispensing  power ;  yet  it  was  important  that  the  bench, 
which  had  been  carefully  packed  for  the  occasion, 
should  appear  to  be  independent.  One  Judge,  there- 
fore, the  least  respectable  of  the  twelve,  was  permitted, 
or  more  probably  commanded,  to  give  his  voice  against 
the  prerogative.^ 

The  power  which  the  courts  of  law  had  thus  recog- 
nised was  not  suffered  to  lie  idle.  Within  a  month 
ifter  the  decision  of  the  King's  Bench  had  been  pro- 
nounced, four  Roman  Catholic  Lords  were  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council.     Two    of  them,  Powis    and  Bel- 

^  See  the  ncconnt  of  the  case  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials ;  Van  Citters, 

May  4  .,  ""r^^'  1686;  Evelyn's  Diarv,  June  27.;  Luttrell's  Diaiy,  June 
•'   Yf  '   July  2.  - 

21.    As  to  Street,  see  Clarendon's  Diary,  Dec.  27.  1688. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  365 

lasyse,  were  of  the  moderate  party,  and  probably  took 
their  seats  with  reluctance  and  with  many  sad  fore- 
bodings. The  other  two,  Arundell  and  Dover,  had 
no  such  misoivino;s.^ 

The  dispensing  power  was,  at  the  same  time,  em- 
ployed for  the  purpose   of  enabling  Roman  ^oman 
Catholics    to   hold   ecclesiastical  preferment.  authoI-K^d 
The  new  Solicitor  readily  drew  the  warrants  c?eSiS 
in  which  Sawyer  had  refused  to  be  concerned,  ^'^"^^fi^"*- 
One    of  these  warrants  was   in    favour   of  a    wretch 
named  Edward  Sclater,  who  had  two  livings 
which  he  was  determined  to  keep   through 
all  changes.      He   administered  the  sacrament  to  his 
parishioners  according  to   the  rites  of  the   Church  of 
England   on    Palm    Sunday  1686.     On    Easter   Sun- 
day, only  seven  days  later,   he  was  at  mass.      The 
royal  dispensation  authorised  him  to  retain  the  emolu- 
ments of  his  benefices.     To  the  remonstrances  of  the 
patrons  from  whom  he  had  received  his  preferment  he 
replied  in  terms  of  insolent  defiance,  and,  while  the 
Roman  Catholic  cause  prospered,  put  forth  an  absurd 
treatise  in  defence  of  his  apostasy.     But,  a  very  few 
weeks  after  the  Revolution,  a  great  congregation  as- 
sembled at  Saint  Mary's  in  the  Savoy,  to  see  him  re- 
ceived again  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church  which  he 
had    deserted.      He    read    his   recantation   with   tears 
flowing  from   his    eyes,   and  pronounced  a  bitter  in- 
vective against  the  Popish  priests  whose  arts  had  se- 
duced him.^ 

1  London  Gazette,  Julj'  19.  1686. 

■•*  'I'lie  letters  patent  arc;  in  Gutch's  Colloctanea  Curiosa.  The  date  is  the 
3d  of  May,  I08(i.  Si:e  Sdater's  Consensus  Veteruni;  Gee's  ruply,  oniillcd 
Veteres  Vindicati;  Dr.  Antiiony  Ilorncck's  account  of  Mr.  Sclater's  recan- 
tation of  the  errors  of  I'opery  on  tiie  5th  of  May,  1G8'J;  Dodd's  Church 
History,  part  viii.  book  ii.  art.  3. 


366  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

Scarcely  less  infamous  was  the  conduct  of  Obadiah 
Walker  Walker.  He  was  an  aged  priest  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  was  well  known  in 
the  University  of  Oxford  as  a  man  of  learning.  He 
had  in  the  late  reign  been  suspected  of  leaning  towards 
Popery,  but  had  outwardly  conformed  to  the  established 
religion,  and  had  at  length  been  chosen  Master  of  Uni- 
vei'sity  College.  Soon  after  the  accession  of  James, 
Walker  detei'mined  to  throw  off  the  disguise  which  he 
had  hitherto  worn.  He  absented  himself  from  the 
public  worship  of  the  Church  of  England,  and,  with 
some  fellows  and  undergraduates  whom  he  had  per- 
verted, heard  mass  daily  in  his  own  apartments.  One 
of  the  first  acts  performed  by  the  new  Solicitor  Gen- 
eral was  to  draw  up  an  instrument  which  authorised 
Walker  and  his  proselytes  to  hold  their  benefices,  not- 
withstanding their  apostasy.  Builders  were  imme- 
diately employed  to  turn  two  sets  of  rooms  into  an 
oratory.  In  a  few  weeks  the  Roman  Catholic  rites 
were  publicly  pei'formed  in  University  College.  A 
Jesuit  was  quartered  there  as  chaplain.  A  press  was 
established  there  under  royal  license  for  the  printing 
of  Roman  Catholic  tracts.  During  two  years  and  a 
half.  Walker  continued  to  make  war  on  Protestantism 
with  all  the  rancour  of  a  renegade  :  but  when  fortune 
turned  he  showed  that  he  wanted  the  courage  of  a 
martyr.  He  was  brought  to  the  bar  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  answer  for  his  conduct,  and  was  base 
enough  to  protest  that  he  had  never  changed  his  re- 
ligion, that  he  had  never  cordially  approved  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  that  he  had 
never  tried  to  bring  any  other  person  within  the 
pale  of  that  Church.  It  was  hardly  worth  while 
to   violate  the  most  sacred  obhgations  of  law   and  of 


II 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  367 

plighted  faith,  for  the  purpose  of  making  such  converts 
as  these. ^ 

In  a  short  time  the  King  went  a  step  further.  Sclater 
and  Walker  had  only  been  permitted  to  keep,  The  deanery 
after  they  became  Papists,  the  preferment  chureil^^ivea 
which  had  been  bestowed  on  them  while  they  caHiou^''" 
passed  for  Protestants.  To  confer  a  high  office  in 
die  Established  Church  on  an  avowed  enemy  of  that 
Church  was  a  far  bolder  \'iolation  of  the  laws  and  of 
the  royal  word.  But  no  course  was  too  bold  for  James. 
The  Deaneiy  of  Christchurch  became  vacant.  That 
office  was,  both  in  dignity  and  in  emolument,  one  of 
the  highest  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  The  Dean 
was  charged  with  the  government  of  a  greater  number 
of  youths  of  high  connections  and  of  great  hopes  than 
could  be  found  in  any  other  college.  He  was  also  the 
head  of  a  Cathedral.  In  both  ciiaracters  it  was  ne- 
cessary that  he  should  be  a  member  of  the  Church  of 
England.  Nevertheless  John  Massey,  who  was  notori- 
ously a  member  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  who  had 
not  one  single  recommendation,  except  that  he  was  a 
member  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  was  appointed  by 
virtue  of  the  dispensing  power;  and  soon  within  the 
walls  of  Christchurch  an  altar  was  decked,  at  which 
mass  was  daily  celebrated.^  To  the  Nuncio  the  King 
Baid  that  what  had  been  done  at  Oxford  should  very 
soon  be  done  at  Cam  bridge  .^ 

Yet  even  this  was  a  small  evil  compared  with  that 
which  Protestants  had  good  ground  to  appre-  Di,po,ai  of 
hend.     It  seemed  but  too  probable  that  the   '^^i'op"<=s- 

1  Gutch's  Collectanea  Curiosa;  Dodil,  viii.  ii.  3.;  Wood.  Ath.  Ox.;  Ellis 
Correspondence,  Feb.  27.  1680;  Commons' Journals,  Oct.  26.  1689. 

*  Gutch's  Collectanea  Curiosa;  Wood's  Atlienaj  Oxonicnses;  Dialogue 
between  a  Churchman  and  a  Di:sscntcr,  IGS'J. 

«  Adda,  July  ^.  1086. 

VOL.  II.  24 


368  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

whole  government  of  the  Anglican  Church  would 
shortly  pass  into  the  hands  of  her  deadliest  enemies. 
Three  important  sees  had  lately  become  vacant,  that 
of  York,  that  of  Chester,  and  that  of  Oxford.  The 
Bishopric  of  Oxford  was  given  to  Samuel  Parker,  a 
parasite,  whose  religion,  if  he  had  any  religion,  was  that 
of  Rome,  and  who  called  himself  a  Protestant  only  be- 
cause he  was  encumbered  with  a  wife.  "  I  wished," 
the  King  said  to  Adda,  "  to  appoint  an  avowed  Catho- 
lic :  but  the  time  is  not  come.  Parker  is  well  inclined 
to  us  ;  he  is  one  of  us  in  feeling  ;  and  by  degrees  he 
will  bring  round  his  clergy."  ^  The  Bishopric  of  Chester, 
vacant  by  the  death  of  John  Pearson,  a  great  name  both 
in  philology  and  in  divinity,  was  bestowed  on  Thomas 
Cartwright,  a  still  viler  sycophant  than  Parker.  The 
Archbishopric  of  York  remained  several  years  vacant. 
As  no  good  reason  could  be  found  for  leaving  so  impor- 
tant a  place  unfilled,  men  suspected  that  the  nomina- 
tion was  delayed  only  till  the  King  could  venture  to 
place  the  mitre  on  the  head  of  an  avowed  Papist.  It 
is  indeed  highly  probable  that  the  Church  of  England 
was  saved  from  this  outrage  solely  by  the  good  sense 
and  good  feeling  of  the  Pope.  Without  a  special  dis- 
pensation from  Rome  no  Jesuit  could  be  a  Bishop  ;  and 
Innocent  could  not  be  induced  to  grant  such  a  disj)en- 
sation  to  Petre. 

James  did  not  even  make  any  secret  of  his  intention 
iiesoiuHon  to  cxort  vigorously  and  systematically  for  the 
usehiseccie-  dcstruction  of  the  Established  Church  all  the 

siiistical  su-  i  .    i     i  i  i  i         j  TT 

premacy  powers  which  he  possessed  as  her  head.  He 
Church.  plainly  said  that,  by  a  wise  dispensation  of 
Providence,  the  Act  of  Supremacy  would  be  the  means 
of  healing  the  fatal  breach  which  it  had  caused.    Henry 

1  Adda,  ^-  1686. 

'    Aug.  9. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  369 

and  Elizabeth  had  usurped  a  dominion  which  rightfully 
belonged  to  the  Holy  See.  That  dominion  had,  in  the 
course  of  succession,  descended  to  an  orthodox  prince, 
and  would  be  held  by  him  in  trust  for  the  Holy  See. 
He  was  authorised  by  law  to  repress  spiritual  abuses ; 
and  the  first  spiritual  abuse  wdiich  he  would  repress 
should  be  the  liberty  which  the  Anglican  clergy  as- 
sumed of  defending  their  own  religion  and  of  attacking 
the  doctrines  of  Rome.^ 

But  he  was  met  by  a  great  difficulty.  The  ecclesias- 
tical supremacy  which  had  devolved  on  him,  ju,  difflcui- 
was  by  no  means  the  same  great  and  terrible  *"^" 
prerogative  which  Elizabeth,  James  the  First,  and 
Charles  the  First  had  possessed.  The  enactment  which 
annexed  to  the  crown  an  almost  boundless  visitatorial 
authority  over  the  Church,  though  it  bad  never  been 
foi-mally  repealed,  had  really  lost  a  great  part  of  its 
force.  The  substantive  law^  remained  ;  but  it  remained 
unaccompanied  by  any  formidable  sanction  or  by  any 
efficient  system  of  procedure,  and  was  therefore  little 
more  than  a  dead  letter. 

The  statute,  which  restored  to  Elizabeth  the  spiritual 
dominion  assumed  by  her  father  and  resigned  by  her 
sister,  contained  a  clause  authorisino;  the  sovereicn  to 
constitute  a  tribunal  which  might  investigate,  reform, 
and  punish  all  ecclesiastical  delincpiencies.  Under  the 
authority  given  by  this  clause,  the  Court  of  High  Com- 

1  "  Ce  prince  m'a  (lit  quu  Dieu  avoit  perinis  que  toutes  les  loix  qui  ont 
it6  faites  pour  t'tablir  la  religion  Prote.staute,  et  dtHruire  la  religion  Catho- 
lique,  servent  pr(?sentenient  de  fondement  b,  ce  qu'il  veut  faire  pour  I'dfab- 
lisseinent  de  la  vraie  rC'ligion,  et  le  niettent  en  droit  d'exercer  un  pouvoir 
encore  plus  grand  que  eelui  (jn'ont  les  rois  Catlioluiues  sur  les  aftaires  eccld- 
Biasti(iues  dans  les  autres  pays."  —  Barillon,  .July  X^.  16H6.  To  Adda  His 
Majesty  said,  a  few  days  later,  "Che  I'autorita  coneessale  dal  parlaiuento 
Bopra  rEeclesiastico  senza  alcun  limite  con  fine  contrario  fosse  adesso  pet 

July   ^. 

serv'ire  al  vautaggio  de'  medesimi  Cattolici."      t—^ — - 

""  All.'.  Z. 


370  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

mission  was  created.  That  court  was,  during  many 
years,  the  terror  of  Nonconformists,  and,  under  the 
harsh  administration  of  Laud,  became  an  object  of  fear 
and  hatred  even  to  those  who  most  loved  the  Estabhshed 
Church.  When  the  Long  Parhament  met,  the  High 
Commission  was  generally  regarded  as  the  most  griev- 
ous of  the  many  gi-ievances  under  which  the  nation  la- 
boured. An  act  was  therefore  somewhat  hastily  passed, 
which  not  only  took  away  from  the  Crown  the  power 
of  appointing  visitors  to  superintend  the  Church,  but 
abolished  all  ecclesiastical  courts  without  distinction. 
After  the  Kestoration,  the  Cavaliers  who  filled  the 
House  of  Commons,  zealous  as  they  were  for  the  pre- 
rogative, still  remembered  with  bitterness  the  tyranny 
of  the  High  Commission,  and  were  by  no  means  dis- 
posed to  revive  an  institution  so  odious.  They  at 
the  same  time  thought,  and  with  reason,  that  the 
statute  which  had  swept  away  all  the  courts  Christian 
of  the  realm,  without  providing  any  substitute,  was 
open  to  grave  objection.  They  accordingly  repealed 
that  statute,  with  the  exception  of  the  part  which  re- 
lated to  the  High  Commission.  Thus,  the  Archidi- 
aconal  Courts,  the  Consistory  Courts,  the  Court  of 
Arches,  the  Court  of  Peciiliars,  and  the  Court  of  Del- 
egates were  revived :  but  the  enactment  by  which 
Elizabeth  and  her  successors  had  been  empowered  to 
appoint  Commissioners  with  visitatorial  authority  over 
the  Church  was  not  only  not  revived,  but  was  declared, 
with  the  utmost  strength  of  language,  to  be  completely 
abrogated.  It  is  therefore  as  clear  as  any  point  of  con- 
stitutional law  can  be  that  James  the  Second  was  not 
competent  to  appoint  a  Commission  with  power  to  visit 
and  govern  the  Church  of  England.^     But,  if  this  were 

1  The  whole  question  is  lucidly  and  unanswerably  argued  in  a  little  con- 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  371 

BO,  it  was  to  little  purpose  that  the  Act  of  Supremacy, 
in  high  sounding  words,  empowered  him  to  amend 
what  was  amiss  in  that  Church.  Nothins  but  a  ma- 
chinery  as  stringent  as  that  which  the  Long  Parliament 
had  destroyed  could  force  the  Anglican  clergy  to  be- 
come his  ajTonts  for  the  destruction  of  the  Anolican 
doctrine  and  disci})line.  He  therefore,  as  early  as  the 
month  of  April  1686,  determined  to  create  a  new  Court 
of  High  Commission.  This  design  was  not  immediately 
executed.  It  encountered  the  opposition  of  every  min- 
ister who  was  not  devoted  to  Fi-ance  and  to  the  Jesuits. 
It  was  regarded  by  lawyers  as  an  outrageous  violation 
of  the  law,  and  by  Churchmen  as  a  direct  attack  upon 
the  Church.  Perhaps  the  contest  might  have  lasted 
longer,  but  for  an  event  which  Avounded  the  pride  and 
inflamed  the  rage  of  the  King.  He  had,  as  supreme 
ordinary,  ])ut  forth  directions,  charging  the  clergy  of 
the  establishment  to  abstain  from  touchino;  in  their  dis- 
courses  on  controverted  points  of  doctrine.  Thus,  while 
sermons  in  defence  of  the  Roman  Catholic  reliixion  were 
preached  on  every  Sunday  and  holiday  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  royal  palaces,  the  Church  of  the  state,  the 
Church  of  the  great  majority  of  the  nation,  was  for- 
bidden to  explain  and  vindicate  her  own  princi|)les. 
The  spirit  of  the  whole  clerical  order  rose  against  this 
injustice.  William  Sherlock,  a  divine  of  distinguished 
abilities,  who  had  written  with  sharpness  against  Whigs 
and  Dissenters,  and  had  been  rewai'ded  by  the  govern- 
ment with  the  Mastership  of  the  Temple  and  with  a 
pension,  was  one  of  the  first  who  incurred  the  royal 
disj)leasure.     His  pension  was  stopped,  and  he  was  se- 

temporary  tract,  entitled  "The  King's  Power  in  Matters  Ecclesiastical  fair- 
ly stated."  See  alsoa  concise  but  forcible  arguiucnt  by  Archbisliop  San- 
troft.     Doyly's  Life  of  SancrotY,  i.  220. 


372  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

verely  reprimanded.^     John  Sharp,  Dean  of  Norwich 
and  Rector  of  St.  Giles's  in  the  Fields,  soon  gave  still 
greater  offence.    He  was  a  man  of  learning  and  fervent 
piety,  a  preacher  of  great  fame,  and  an  exemplary  parish 
priest.     In  politics  he  was,  like  most  of  his  brethren,  a 
Tory,  and  had  just  been  appointed  one  of  the  royal  chap- 
lains.  He  received  an  anonymous  letter  which  purported 
to  come  from  one  of  his  parishioners  who  had  been  stag- 
gered by  the  arguments  of  Roman  Catholic  theologians, 
and  who  was  anxious  to  be  satisfied  that  the  Church 
of  England  was  a  branch  of  the  true  Church  of  Christ. 
No  divine,  not  utterly  lost  to  all  sense  of  religious  duty 
and  of  professional  honour,  could  refuse  to  answer  such 
a  call.     On  the  following  Sunday  Sharp  delivered  an 
animated  discourse  against  the  high  pretensions  of  the 
see  of  Rome.     Some  of  his  expressions  were  exagger- 
ated, distorted,  and  carried  by  talebearers  to  Whitehall. 
It  was  falsely  said  that  he  had  spoken  with  contumely 
of  the  theological  disquisitions  which  had  been  found  in 
the  strong  box  of  the  late  King,  and  which  the  present 
King  had  pviblished.     Compton,  the  Bishop  of  London, 
received  orders  from  Sunderland  to  suspend  Sharp  till 
the  royal   pleasure    should   be   further   known.     The 
Bishop  was  in  great  perplexity.     His  recent  conduct  in 
the  House  of  Lords  had  given  deep  offence  to  the  court. 
Already  his  name  had  been  struck  out  of  the  list  of 
Privy  Councillors.     Already  he    had    been   dismissed 
from  his  office  in  the  royal  chapel.     He  was  unwilling 
to  give  fresh  provocation  :  but  the  act  which  he  was 
directed  to  perfoi'm  was  a  judicial  act.     He  felt  that  it 
was  unjust,  and  he  was  assured  by  the  best  advisers 
that  it  was  also  illegal,  to  inflict  punishment  without 
giving  any  opportunity  for  defence.     jHe  accordingly, 

1  Letter  from  James  to  Clarendon,  Feb.  18.  l''8|. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  873 

in  tlie  humblest  terms,  represented  his  difficulties  to  the 
King,  and  privately  requested  Sharp  not  to  appear  in 
tlie  pulpit  for  the  present.  Reasonable  as  were  Comp- 
ton's  scruples,  obsequious  as  were  his  apologies,  James 
was  greatly  incensed.  What  insolence  to  plead  either 
natui'al  justice  or  positive  law  in  oj^position  to  an  ex- 
press command  of  the  Sovereign  !  Sharp  was  forgot- 
ten. The  Bishop  became  a  mark  for  the  whole  ven- 
geance of  the  government.^  The  King  felt  jj^  creates  a 
more  painfully  than  ever  the  want  of  that  H*^ghCom-°^ 
tremendous  engine  which  had  once  coerced  ""'^""o- 
refractory  ecclesiastics.  He  probably  knew  that,  for 
a  few  angry  words  uttered  against  his  father's  govern- 
ment. Bishop  Williams  had  been  suspended  by  the 
High  Commission  from  all  ecclesiastical  dignities  and 
functions.  The  desion  of  revivino;  that  formidable  tri- 
bunal  was  pushed  on  more  eagez'ly  than  ever.  In  July 
London  was  alarmed  by  the  news  that  the  King  had, 
in  direct  defiance  of  two  acts  of  Parliament  drawn  in 
the  strongest  terms,  entrusted  the  whole  government 
of  the  Church  to  seven  Commissioners.^  The  words  in 
which  the  jurisdiction  of  these  officers  was  described 
were  loose,  and  might  be  stretched  to  almost  any  ex- 
tent. All  colleges  and  grammar  schools,  even  those 
founded  by  the  liberality  of  private  benefactors,  were 
placed  under  the  authority  of  the  new  board.  All  who 
depended  for  bread  on  situations  in  the  Church  or  in 
academical  institutions,  from  the  Primate  down  to  the 
youngest  curate,  from  the  Vicechancellors  of  Oxford 

'  The  best  account  of  tliese  transactions  is  in  the  Life  of  Sharp,  hv  liia 
son.     Van  Citters,  ^j;"^~  1086. 

2  Harillon,  '^,^1'  IfiSii.  Van  Citters,  July  |Q.;  Privy  Council  Book, 
July  17.:  Kills  Correspondence,  July  17.;  Evelyn's  Diary,  July  14.;  Lut 
treli's  Diary,  Aug.  5,  6. 


874  HISTORY    OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

and  Cambridge  doAvri  to  the  Immblest  pedagogue  who 
taught  Corderius,  were  subjected  to  this  despotic  tri- 
bunal. If  any  one  of  those  many  thousands  was  sus- 
pected of  doing  or  saying  anything  distasteful  to  the 
government,  the  Commissioners  miglit  cite  him  before 
them.  In  their  mode  of  dealing  with  him  they  were 
fettered  by  no  rules.  They  were  themselves  at  once 
prosecutors  and  judges.  The  accused  party  was  to  be 
fuxuished  with  no  copy  of  the  charge.  He  was  ex- 
amined and  crossexamined.  If  his  answers  did  not 
give  satisfaction,  he  was  liable  to  be  suspended  from  his 
office,  to  be  ejected  from  it,  to  be  pronounced  incapable 
of  holding  any  preferment  in  future.  If  he  were  con- 
tumacious, he  might  be  excommunicated,  or,  in  other 
words,  be  deprived  of  all  civil  rights  and  imprisoned 
for  life.  He  might  also,  at  the  discretion  of  the  court, 
be  loaded  with  all  the  costs  of  the  proceeding  by  which 
he  had  been  reduced  to  beggary.  No  appeal  was  given. 
The  Commissioners  nvere  directed  to  execute  their  office 
notwithstanding  any  law  which  might  be,  or  might 
seem  to  be,  inconsistent  with  these  regulations.  Lastly, 
lest  any  person  should  doubt  that  it  was  intended  to 
I'evive  that  terrible  court  from  which  the  Lono;  Parlia- 
ment  had  freed  the  nation,  the  new  Visitors  were  di- 
rected to  use  a  seal  bearing  exactly  the  same  device 
and  the  same  superscription  with  the  seal  of  the  old 
High  Commission.^ 

The  chief  Commissioner  was  the  Chancellor.  His 
])resence  and  assent  were  declared  necessary  to  every 
proceeding.  All  men  knew  how  unjustly,  insolently, 
and  barbarously  he  had  acted  in  courts  where  he  had 

1  The  device  was  a  rose  and  crown.  Before  the  device  was  the  initial 
letter  of  the  Sovereign's  name;  after  it  the  letter  R.  Round  the  seal  was 
this  inscription,  "  Sigillum  commissariorum  regiae  majestatis  ad  causas  ec- 
clesiasticas." 


leSfi.j  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  375 

been,  to  a  certain  extent,  restrained  by  the  known  laws 
of  England.  It  was,  therefore,  not  difficult  to  foresee 
how  he  would  conduct  himself  in  a  situation  in  which 
he  was  at  entire  liberty  to  make  forms  of  procedure 
and  rules  of  evidence  for  himself. 

Of  the  other  six  Commissioners  three  were  prelates 
and  three  laymen.  The  name  of  Archbishop  Bancroft 
stood  first.  But  he  was  fully  convinced  that  the  court 
was  illegal,  that  all  its  judgments  would  be  null,  and 
that  by  sitting  in  it  he  should  incur  a  serious  responsi- 
bility. He  therefore  determined  not  to  comply  with 
the  royal  mandate.  He  did  not,  however,  act  on  this 
occasion  with  that  courage  and  sincerity  which  he 
showed  when  driven  to  extremity  two  years  later.  He 
begged  to  be  excused  on  the  plea  of  business  and  ill 
health.  The  other  members  of  the  board,  he  added, 
were  men  of  too  much  ability  to  need*  his  assistance. 
These  disingenuous  apologies  ill  became  the  Primate  of 
all  England  at  such  a  crisis  ;  nor  did  they  avert  the  royal 
displeasure.  Sancroft's  name  was  not  indeed  struck  out 
of  the  list  of  Privy  Councillors  :  but,  to  the  bitter  mor- 
tification of  the  friends  of  tiie  Church,  he  was  no  longer 
summoned  on  Council  days.  "  If,"  said  the  King, 
"  he  is  too  sick  or  too  busy  to  go  to  the  Commission, 
it  is  a  kindness  to  relieve  him  from  attendance  at 
Council."  1 

The  government  found  no  similar  difficulty  with 
Nathaniel  Crewe,  Bishop  of  the  great  and  opulent  see 
of  Durham,  a  man  nobly  born,  and  raised  so  high  in 
his  profession  that  he  could  scarcely  wish  to  rise  higher, 
but  mean,  vain,  and  cowardly.  He  had  been  made 
Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal  when  the  Bishop  of  London 

1  Appendix  to  Clarendon's  Diary;  Van  Citters,  Oct.    «  .  1G8G;  Barillon, 
Oct.  ^. ;  Doyly's  Life  of  Sancrott. 


376  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

was  banished  from  the  palace.  The  honour  of  being 
an  Ecclesiastical  Commissioner  turned  Crewe's  head. 
It  was  to  no  purpose  that  some  of  his  friends  repre- 
sented to  him  the  risk  which  he  ran  by  sitting  in  an 
illegal  tribunal.  He  was  not  ashamed  to  answer  that 
he  could  not  live  out  of  the  royal  smile,  and  exult- 
ingly  expressed  his  hope  that  his  name  would  appear 
in  history,  a  hope  which  has  not  been  altogether  dis- 
appointed.^ 

Thomas  Sprat,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  was  the  third 
clerical  Commissioner.  He  was  a  man  to  whose  talents 
posterity  has  scarcely  done  justice.  Unhappily  for  his 
fame,  it  has  been  usual  to  print  his  verses  in  collections 
of  the  British  poets  ;  and  those  who  judge  of  him  by  his 
verses  miist  consider  him  as  a  servile  imitator,  who, 
without  one  spark  of  Cowley's  admirable  genius,  mim- 
icked whatever  was  least  commendable  in  Cowley's 
manner:  but  those  who  are  acquainted  with  Sprat's 
prose  writings  will  form  a  very  different  estimate  of  his 
powers.  He  was  indeed  a  great  master  of  our  lan- 
guage, and  possessed  at  once  the  eloquence  of  the 
}n-eacher,  of  the  controversialist,  and  of  the  historian. 
His  moral  character  might  have  passed  with  little  cen- 
sure had  he  belonged  to  a  less  sacred  {)rofession  ;  for  the 
worst  that  can  be  said  of  him  is  that  he  was  indolent, 
luxurious,  and  worldly  :  but  such  failings,  though  not 
commonly  regarded  as  very  heinous  in  men  of  secular 
callings,  are  scandalous  in  a  prelate.  Tiie  Archbishopric 
of  York  was  vacant ;  Sprat  hoped  to  obtain  it,  and  there- 
fore accepted  a  seat  at  the  ecclesiastical  board :  but  he 
was  too  goodnatured  a  man  to  behave  harshly  ;  and  he 
was  too  sensible  a  man  not  to  know  that  he  micjht  at 
some  future  time  be  called  to  a  serious  account  by  a 

1  Burnet,  i.  676. 


1686.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  377 

Parliament.  He  therefore,  thougli  he  consented  to  act, 
tried  to  do  as  little  miscliief,  and  to  make  as  few  ene- 
mies, as  possible.^ 

The  three  remaining  Commissioners  were  the  Lord 
Treasurer,  the  Lord  President,  and  the  Chief  Justice 
of  the  King's  Bench.  Rochester,  disapproving  and 
murmuring,  consented  to  serve.  Much  as  he  had  to 
endure  at  the  court,  he  could  not  bear  to  quit  it.  Much 
as  lie  loved  the  Church,  he  could  not  bring  himself  to 
sacrifice  for  her  sake  his  white  staff,  his  patronage,  his 
salary  of  eight  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  the  far 
larger  indirect  emoluments  of  his  office.  He  excused 
his  conduct  to  others,  and  perhaps  to  himself,  by  plead- 
ing that,  as  a  Commissioner,  he  might  be  able  to  pre- 
vent much  evil,  and  that,  if  he  refused  to  act,  some 
person  less  attached  to  the  Protestant  religion  would 
bo  found  to  fill  the  vacant  place.  Sunderland  was  the 
i-ei)resentative  of  the  Jesuitical  cabal.  Herbert's  recent 
decision  on  the  question  of  the  dispensing  power  seemed 
to  prove  that  he  woidd  not  flinch  from  any  service 
which  the  King  might  require. 

As  soon  as  the  Commission   had   been  opened,  tlie 
Bishop  of  London  was  cited  before  the  new   „ 
tribunal.    He  appeared.    "  I  demand  of  you,"   nlstopof" 
said  Jeffreys,  "  a  direct  and  positive  answer,  ^""^don. 
Why  did  not  you  suspend  Dr.  Sharp  ?  " 

The  Bishop  requested  a  copy  of  the  Commission  in 
oi-der  that  he  might  know  by  what  authority  he  was 
thus  interrogated.  "  If  you  mean,"  said  Jeffreys,  "  to 
dispute  our  authoi-ity,  I  sliall  take  another  course  with 
you.  As  to  the  Commission,  I  do  not  doubt  that  you 
have  seen  it.  At  all  events  yon  may  see  it  in  any 
coffeehouse  for  a  penny."  The  insolence  of  the  Chan- 
1  Burnet,  i.  675.  ii.  029.;  Sprat's  Letters  to  Dorset. 


378  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

cellor  s  reply  appears  to  have  shocked  the  other  Com- 
missioners, and  lie  Avas  forced  to  make  some  awkward 
apologies.  He  then  returned  to  the  point  from  which 
he  had  started.  "  This,"  he  said,  "  is  not  a  court  in 
which  written  charges  are  exhibited.  Our  proceed- 
ings are  summary,  and  by  word  of  mouth.  The  ques- 
tion is  a  plain  one.  Why  did  you  not  obey  the  King  ?  " 
With  some  difficulty  Compton  obtained  a  brief  delay, 
and  the  assistance  of  counsel.  When  the  case  had 
been  heard,  it  was  evident  to  all  men  that  the  Bishop 
had  done  only  what  he  was  bound  to  do.  The  Treas- 
urer, the  Chief  Justice,  and  Sprat  were  for  acquittal. 
The  King's  wrath  was  moved.  It  seemed  that  his 
Ecclesiastical  Commission  would  fail  him  as  his  Tory 
Parliament  had  failed  him.  He  offered  Rochester  a 
simple  choice,  to  pronounce  the  Bishop  guilty,  or  to 
quit  the  Treasury.  Rochester  was  base  enough  to 
yield.  Compton  was  suspended  from  all  spiritual  func- 
tions ;  and  the  charge  of  his  great  diocese  was  com- 
mitted to  his  judges,  Spi*at  and  Crewe.  He  continued, 
however,  to  reside  in  his  palace  and  to  receive  his  reve- 
nues ;  for  it  was  known  that,  had  any  attempt  been 
made  to  deprive  him  of  his  temporalities,  he  would  have 
put  himself  under  the  protection  of  the  common  law  ; 
and  Herbert  himself  declared  that,  at  common  law, 
judgment  must  be  given  against  the  crown.  This  con- 
sideration induced  the  King  to  pause.  Only  a  few 
weeks  had  elapsed  since  he  had  packed  the  courts 
of  Westminster  Hall  in  order  to  obtain  a  decision 
in  favour  of  his  dispensing  power.  He  now  found 
that,  unless  he  packed  them  again,  he  should  not  be 
able  to  obtain  a  decision  in  favour  of  the  proceed- 
ings of  his  Ecclesiastical  Commission.  He  determined, 
therefore,   to   postpone    for   a  short   time    the    confis- 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  379 

cation  of  the  freehold  property  of  refractory  clergy- 


men.^ 


The  temper  of  the  nation  was  indeed  such  as  mio-ht 
well  make  him  hesitate.    During  some  months  Di<scontent 
discontent  had  been  steadily  and  rapidly  in-  the'^'ifbiic 
creasing.       The    celebration    of  the    Roman  uoman"*^ 
Catholic  worship  had  long  been  prohibited  by  ri(ei'""j 
Act  of  Parliament.     During  several  genera-  ^^^'^ents. 
tions  no  Roman  Catholic  clergyman  had  dared  to  ex- 
hibit himself  in  any  public  place  with  the  bado-es  of 
his  office.     Against  the  regular  clergy,  and  against  the 
restless  and  subtle  Jesuits  by  name,  liad  been  enacted 
a  succession  of  rigorous  statutes.     Every  Jesuit  who  set 
foot  in  this  country  was  liable  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and 
quartered.     A  reward  was  offered  for  his   detection. 
He  was  not  allowed  to  take  advantage  of  the  general 
rule,  that  men   are  not  bound   to  accuse  themselves. 
Whoever  was  suspected  of  being  a  Jesuit  might  be  in- 
terrogated, and,  if  he  refused  to  answer,  might  be  sent 
to  prison  for  life.^     These  laws,  though  they  had  not, 
except  when  there  was  supposed  to  be  some  peculiar 
danger,  been  strictly  executed,  and  though  they  had 
never  prevented    Jesuits  fi'om  resorting  to  England, 
had  made  disguise   necessary.     But  all   disguise   was 
now  thrown  off.     Injudicious  members  of  the  King's 
Church,  encouraged  by  him,  took  a  pride  in  defying 
statutes  which  were  still  of  undoubted  vaHdity,  and  feel- 
ings which  had  a  stronger  hold  of  the  national  mind 
than  at  any  former  period.     Roman  Catliolic  chapels 
rose  all  over  the  country.     Cowls,  girdles  of  ropes,  and 
strings  of  beads  constantly  appeared  in  the  streets,  and 

1  Burnet,  i.  G77.;  liaiilloii,  Sept.  ^.  168G.     The  public  proceedings  an 
in  the  Collection  ot'Stiitc  Trials. 
»  27  Eliz.  c.  2.;  2  Jac.  1.  c.  4.;  3  Jac.  1.  c.  5. 


380  HI.STOBY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

astonislied  a  population,  the  oldest  of  whom  had  never 
seen  a  conventual  garb  except  on  the  stage.  A  convent 
rose  at  Clerkenwell  on  the  site  of  the  ancient  cloister 
of  Saint  John.  The  Franciscans  occupied  a  mansion 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  The  Carmelites  were  quar- 
tered in  the  City.  A  society  of  Benedictine  monks 
was  lodged  in  Saint  James's  Palace.  In  the  Savoy  a 
spacious  house,  including  a  church  and  a  school,  was 
built  for  the  Jesuits.^  The  skill  and  care  with  which 
those  fathers  had,  during  several  generations,  con- 
ducted the  education  of  youth,  had  drawn  forth  reluc- 
tant praises  from  the  wisest  Protestants.  Bacon  had 
pronounced  the  mode  of  instruction  followed  in  the 
Jesuit  colleges  to  be  the  best  yet  known  in  the  world, 
and  had  warmly  expressed  his  regret  that  so  admirable 
a  system  of  intellectual  and  moral  discipline  should  be 
employed  on  the  side  of  error.^  It  was  not  improba- 
ble that  the  new  academy  in  the  Savoy  might,  under 
royal  patronage,  prove  a  formidable  rival  to  the  great 
foundations  of  Eton,  Westminster,  and  Winchester. 
Indeed,  soon  after  the  school  was  opened,  the  classes 
consisted  of  four  hundred  boys,  about  one  half  of 
whom  were  Protestants.  The  Protestant  pupils  were 
not  required  to  attend  mass :  but  there  could  be  no 
doubt  that  the  influence  of  able  preceptors,  devoted 
to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  versed  in  all  the 
arts  which  win  the  confidence  and  aifection  of  youth, 
would  make  many  converts. 

These  things  produced  great  excitement  among  the 
populace,  which  is   always  more  moved  by 

Wots.  '       '  .  ,  .11  1  • 

what  nnpresses  the   senses   than   by  what  is 
addressed  to  the  reason.     Thousands  of  rude  and  igno- 

>  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  79,  80.  Orig.  Mem. 
2  De  Augineiitis,  i.  vi.  4. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  381 

rant  men,  to  whom  the  dispensing  power  and  the  Eccle- 
siastical Commission  were  words  without  a  meaning, 
saw  with  dismay  and  indignation  a  Jesuit  college  rising 
on  the  banks  of  the  Thames,  friars  in  hoods  and  gowns 
Avalking  in  the  Strand,  and  crowds  of  devotees  pressing 
in  at  the  doors  of  temples  where  homage  was  paid  to 
graven  images.  Riots  broke  out  in  several  parts  of 
the  country.  At  Coventry  and  Worcester  the  Roman 
Catholic  worship  was  violently  interrupted.^  At  Bris- 
tol the  rabble,  countenanced,  it  was  said,  by  the  mag- 
istrates, exliibited  a  profane  and  indecent  pageant,  in 
which  the  Virgin  Mary  was  represented  by  a  buffoon, 
and  in  which  a  mock  host  was  carried  in  procession. 
Soldiers  were  called  out  to  disperse  the  mob.  The 
mob,  then  and  ever  since  one  of  the  fiercest  in  the  king- 
dom, resisted.  Blows  were  exchanged,  and  serious 
hurts  inflicted.^  The  agitation  was  great  in  the  capi- 
tal, and  greater  in  the  City,  properly  so  called,  than  at 
Westminster.  For  the  people  of  Westminster  had  been 
accustomed  to  see  among  them  the  private  chapels  of 
Roman  Catliolic  Ambassadors  :  but  the  City  had  not, 
within  living  memory,  been  polluted  by  any  idolatrous 
exhibition.  Now,  however,  the  resident  of  the  Elector 
Palatine,  encouraged  by  the  King,  fitted  up  a  chapel 
in  Lime  Street.  The  heads  of  the  corporation,  though 
men  selected  for  office  on  account  of  their  known  Tory- 
ism, protested  against  this  proceeding,  which,  as  they 
said,  the  ablest  gentlemen  of  the  long  robe  regarded  as 
illegal.  The  Lord  Mayor  was  ordered  to  appear  before 
the  Privy  Council.  "  Take  heed  what  you  do,"  said 
the  King.  "  Obey  me  ;  and  do  not  trouble  yourself 
either  about  gentlemen  of  the  long  robe  or  gentlemen 
of  the  short  robe."     The  Chancellor  took  up  the  word, 

1  Van  Citters,  May  ^.  KJSG. 

'•*  Vail  Ciltcis,  May  |  J.  1G3G.     Adda,  May  ^. 


382  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

and  reprimanded  the  unfortunate  magistrate  with  the 
genuine  eloquence  of  the  Old  Bailey  bar.  The  chapel 
was  opened.  All  the  neighbourhood  was  soon  in  com- 
motion. Great  crowds  assembled  in  Cheapside  to  attack 
the  new  mass  house.  The  priests  were  insulted.  A 
crucifix  was  taken  out  of  the  building  and  set  up  on 
the  parish  pump.  The  Lord  Mayor  came  to  quell  the 
tumult,  but  was  received  with  cries  of  "  No  wooden 
gods."  The  trainbands  were  ordered  to  disperse  the 
crowd  :  but  the  trainbands  shared  in  the  popular  feel- 
ing ;  and  murmurs  were  heard  from  the  canks,  "  We 
cannot  in  conscience  fight  for  Popery."  ^ 

The  Elector  Palatine  was,  like  James,  a  sincere  and 
zealous  Catholic,  and  was,  like  James,  the  ruler  of  a 
Protestant  people  ;  but  the  two  princes  resembled  each 
other  little  in  temper  and  understanding.  The  Elector 
had  promised  to  respect  the  rights  of  the  Church  which 
he  found  established  in  his  dominions.  He  had  strictly 
kept  his  word,  and  had  not  suffered  himself  to  be  pro- 
voked to  any  violence  by  the  indiscretion  of  preachers 
who,  in  their  antipathy  to  his  faith,  occasionally  forgot 
the  respect  which  they  owed  to  his  person.^  He  learned, 
with  concern,  that  great  offence  had  been  given  to  the 
people  of  London  by  the  injudicious  act  of  his  represent- 
ative, and,  much  to  his  honour,  declared  that  he  would 
forego  the  privilege  to  which,  as  a  sovereign  prince,  he 
was  entitled,  rather  than  endanger  the  peace  of  a  great 
city.  *'  I,  too,"  he  wrote  to  James,  "  have  Protestant 
subjects  ;  and  I  know  with  how  much  caution  and  deli- 
cacy it  is  necessary  that  a  Catholic  prince  so  situated 

1  Ellis  Correspondence,  April  27.  1(J86;  Barillon,  April  i|..;  Van  Citters, 
April  ^,  •  Privy  Council  Book,  March  26. ;  Luttrell's  Diary ;  Adda,  '^t^'' 

March  26.      ...     2      April  23. 
April  5.    '  ^P''''  12^-  IvilTsT 

*  Burnet's  Travels. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  383 

should  act."  James,  instead  of  expressing  gratitude 
for  this  humane  and  considerate  conduct,  turned  the 
letter  into  ridicule  before  the  foreio;n  ministers.  It  was 
determined  that  the  Elector  should  have  a  chapel  in  the 
City  whether  he  would  or  not,  and  that,  if  the  train- 
bands refused  to  do  their  duty,  their  place  should  be 
supplied  by  the  Guards.^ 

The  effect  of  these  disturbances  on  trade  was  serious. 
The  Dutch  minister  infonned  the  States  General  that 
the  business  of  the  Exchange  was  at  a  stand.  The 
Commissioners  of  the  Customs  reported  to  the  King 
that,  during  the  month  which  followed  the  opening  of 
Lime  Street  Chapel,  the  receipt  in  the  port  of  the 
Thames  had  fallen  off  by  some  thousands  of  pounds.^ 
Several  Aldermen,  who,  though  zealous  royalists  ap- 
pointed under  the  new  charter,  Avere  deeply  interested 
in  the  commercial  prosperity  of  their  city,  and  loved 
neither  Popery  nor  martial  law,  tendered  their  resigna- 
tions. But  the  King  was  resolved  not  to  yield.  He 
formed  a  camp  on  Hounslow  Heath,  and  col-  a  camp 

.       .  .  .  r>      1  formed  at 

lected  there,  within  a  circumference  of  about  uounsiow. 
two  miles  and  a  half,  fourteen  battalions  of  foot  and 
thirty-two  squadrons  of  horse,  amounting  to  thirteen 
thousand  fighting  men.  Twenty-six  pieces  of  artillery, 
and  many  wains  laden  with  arms  and  ammunition,  were 
dragged  from  the  Tower  through  the  City  to  Houns- 
low.^ The  Londoners  saw  this  great  force  assembled 
'  in  their  neichbourhood  with  a  terror  which  familiarity 
soon  diminished.  A  visit  to  Hounslow  became  their 
favourite  amusement  on  holidays.    The  camp  presented 

1  Barillon,  ^p-^'  1686. 

'    June  6. 

Van  CittcTs,  ^^'f'^  168G. 
8  Kllis  Correspondence,  Juno  26.  1686;  Van  Citteis,  July  ^.;  Luttrell's 
Diary,  July  I'J. 

TOL.   II.  26 


384  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ck.  VI. 

the  appearance  of  a  vast  fair.  Mingled  witli  the  mus- 
keteers and  dragoons,  a  multitude  of  fine  gentlemen 
and  ladies  from  Soho  Square,  sharpers  and  painted 
women  from  Whitefriars,  invalids  in  sedans,  monks  in 
hoods  and  gowns,  lacqueys  in  rich  liveries,  pedlars,  or- 
ange girls,  mischievous  apprentices  and  gaping  clowns, 
was  constantly  passing  and  repassing  through  the  long 
lanes  of  tents.  From  some  pavilions  were  heard  the 
noises  of  drunken  revelry,  from  others  the  curses  of 
gamblers.  In  truth  the  place  was  merely  a  gay  sub- 
urb of  the  capital.  The  King,  as  was  amply  proved 
two  years  later,  had  greatly  miscalculated.  He  had 
forgotten  that  vicinity  operates  in  more  ways  than  one. 
He  had  hoped  that  his  army  would  overawe  London  : 
but  the  result  of  his  pohcy  was  that  the  feelings  and 
opinions  of  London  took  complete  possession  of  his 
army.i 

Scarcely  indeed  had  the  encampment  been  formed 
when  there  were  rumours  of  quarrels  between  the  Prot- 
estant and  Popish  soldiers.^  A  little  tract,  entitled  A 
humble  and  hearty  Address  to  all  English  Protestants 
in  the  Army,  had  been  actively  circulated  through  the 
ranks.  The  writer  vehemently  exhorted  the  troops 
to  use  their  arms  in  defence,  not  of  the  mass  book,  but 
of  tho'Bible,  of  the  Great  Charter,  and  of  the  Petition 
of  Right.  He  was  a  man  already  under  the  frown  of 
power.  His  character  was  remarkable,  and  his  histoiy 
not  uninstructive. 

1  See  the  contemporary  poems,  entitled  Hounslow  Heath  and  Caesar's 

Ghost;  Evelyn's  Diary,  June  2.  1686.     A  ballad  in  the  Pepysian  collection 

contains  the  following  lines:  — 

"  I  liked  the  place  beyond  expressing, 
I  ne'er  ?aw  a  camp  so  fine. 
Not  a  maid  iu  a  plain  dressing. 
But  might  taste  a  glass  of  wine." 

*  Luttrell's  Diary,  June  18.  1686. 


1««61  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  385 

His  name  was  Samuel  Johnson.     He  was  a  priest  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  had  been  chap-  gamuei 
lain  to  Lord   Russell.     Johnson  was  one  of   •'°''"*°'»- 
those  persons  who  are  mortally  hated  by  their  oppo- 
nents, and  less  loved  than  respected  by  their  allies.    His 
morals   were    pure,   his   religious    feelings   ardent,   his 
learning  and  abilities  not  contemptible,  his  judgment 
weak,  his  temper  acrimonious,  turbulent,  and  uncon- 
querably stubborn.     His  profession   made  him  pecul- 
iarly odious  to  the  zealous  supporters  of  monarchy ;  for 
a  republican  in  holy  orders  was  a  strange  and  almost 
an  unnatural  being.     During  the  late  reio;n  Johnson 
had  published  a  book  entitled  Julian  the  Apostate.    The 
object  of  this  work  was  to  show  that  the  Christians  of 
the  fourth  century  did  not  hold  the  doctrine  of  nonre- 
sistance.     It  was  easy  to  produce  passages  from  Chrys- 
ostom  and  Jerome  written  in  a  spirit  very  different  from 
that  of  the  Anglican  divines  who  preached  against  the 
Exclusion  Bill.     Johnson,  however,  went  further.     He 
attempted  to  revive  the  odious  imputation  wliich  had, 
for  very  obvious  reascms,  been  thrown  by  Libnnius  on 
the  Christian  soldiers  of  Julian,  and  insinuated  that  the 
dart  which  slew  the  imperial  renegade  came,  not  from 
the  enemy,  but  from  some  Rumbold  or  Ferguson  in  the 
Roman  ranks.    A  hot  controversy  followed.    Whig  and 
Toiy  disputants  wrangled  fiercely  about  an  obscure  pas- 
sage, in  which  Gregory  of  Nazianzus  praises  a   pious 
Bishop  who  was  going  to  bastinado  somebody.      Tlie 
Whigs  maintained  that  the  holy  man  was  going  to  bas- 
tinado the  Emperor  ;  the  Tories  that,  at  the  worst,  he 
was  only  going   to  bastinado  a  captain  of  the  guard. 
Johnson  prepared  a  reply  to  his  assailants,  in  which  ho 
drew  an  elaborate  ])arallel  between  JuHan  and  James, 
then  Duke  of  York.     Julian  liad,  during  many  years, 


886  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  TL 

pretended  to  abhor  idolatry,  while  in  heart  an  idolater. 
Julian  had,  to  serve  a  turn,  occasionally  affected  respect 
for  the  rights  of  conscience.  Julian  had  punished  cities 
which  were  zealous  for  the  true  religion,  by  taking 
away  their  municipal  privileges.  Julian  had,  by  his 
flatterers,  been  called  the  Just.  James  was  provoked 
beyond  endurance.  Johnson  was  prosecuted  for  a  libel, 
convicted,  and  condemned  to  a  fine  which  he  had  no 
means  of  paying.  He  was  therefore  kept  in  gaol ;  and 
it  seemed  likely  that  his  confinement  would  end  only 
with  his  life.i 

Over  the  room  which  he  occupied  in  the  King's 
Bench  prison  lodged  another  offender  whose 
character  well  deserves  to  be  studied.  This 
was  Hugh  Speke,  a  young  man  of  good  family,  but  of 
a  singularly  base  and  depraved  nature.  His  love  of 
mischief  and  of  dark  and  crooked  ways  amounted  almost 
to  madness.  To  cause  confusion  without  being  found 
out  was  his  business  and  his  pastime  ;  and  he  had  a  rare 
skill  in  using  honest  enthusiasts  as  the  instruments  of 
his  coldblooded  malice.  He  had  attempted,  by  means 
of  one  of  his  puppets,  to  fasten  on  Charles  and  James 
the  crime  of  murdering  Essex  in  the  Tower.  On  this 
occasion  the  agency  of  Speke  had  been  traced ;  and, 
though  he  succeeded  in  throwing  the  greater  part  of  the 
blame  on  his  dupe,  he  had  not  escaped  with  impunity. 
He  was  now  a  prisoner  ;  but  his  fortune  enabled  him  to 
live  with  comfort ;  and  he  was  under  so  little  restraint 
that  he  was  able  to  keep  up  regular  communication  with 
one  of  his  confederates  who  managed  a  secret  press. 

Johnson   was  the   very   man  for   Speke's  purposes, 
zealous  and  intrepid,  a  scholar  and  a  practised  contro- 

1  See  the  memoirs  of  Johnson,  prefixed  to  the  folio  edition  of  his  life,  hia 
Julian,  and  his  answers  to  his  opponents.     See  also  Hickes's  Jovian. 


J 


1686.J  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  387 

versialist,  yet  as  simple  as  a  child.  A  close  intimacy 
sprang  up  between  the  two  fellow  prisoners.  Johnson 
wrote  a  succession  of  bitter  and  vehement  treatises 
which  Speke  conveyed  to  the  printer.  When  the  camp 
was  formed  at  Hounslow,  Speke  urged  Johnson  to 
compose  an  addi'ess  which  might  excite  the  troops  to 
mutiny.  The  paper  was  instantly  drawn  up.  Many 
thousands  of  copies  were  struck  off  and  brought  to 
Speke's  room,  whence  they  were  distributed  over  the 
whole  country,  and  especially  among  the  soldiers.  A 
milder  government  than  that  which  then  ruled  England 
would  have  been  moved  to  high  resentment  by  such  a 
provocation.  Strict  search  was  made.  A  subordinate 
agent  who  had  been  employed  to  circulate  the  address 
saved  himself  by  giving  up  Johnson  ;  and  Johnson  was 
not  the  man  to  save  himself  by  giving  up  Speke.  An 
information  was  filed,  and  a  conviction  ob-  Proceedings 
tained  without  difficulty.  Julian  Johnson,  as  Johnson. 
he  was  popularly  called,  was  sentenced  to  stand  thrice 
in  the  pillory,  and  to  be  whipped  from  Newgate  to  Ty- 
burn. The  Judge,  Sir  Francis  Withins,  told  the  crim- 
inal to  be  thankful  for  the  great  lenity  of  the  Attorney 
General,  who  might  have  treated  the  case  as  one  of 
high  treason.  "  I  ow^e  him  no  thanks,"  answered  John- 
son, dauntlessly.  "  Am  I,  whose  only  crime  is  that  I 
have  defended  the  Church  and  the  laws,  to  be  grateful 
for  being  scourged  like  a  dog,  while  Popish  scribblers 
are  suffered  daily  to  insult  tiie  Church  and  to  violate 
the  laws  with  impunity  ?  "  The  energy  with  which  he 
spoke  was  such  that  both  the  Judges  and  the  crown 
lawyers  thought  it  necessary  to  vindicate  themselves, 
and  protested  that  they  knew  of  no  Popish  publications 
such  as  those  to  which  the  prisoner  alluded.  He  in- 
stantly drew  from    his   pocket  some   Roman   Catholic 


888  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  TL 

books  and  trinkets  which  were  then  freely  exposed  for 
sale  under  the  royal  patronage,  read  aloud  the  titles  of 
the  books,  and  threw  a  rosary  across  the  table  to  the 
King's  counsel.  "  And  now,"  he  cried  with  a  loud 
voice,  "  I  lay  this  information  before  God,  before  this 
court,  and  before  the  English  people.  We  shall  soon 
see  whether  Mr.  Attorney  will  do  his  duty." 

It  was  resolved  that,  before  the  punishment  was  in- 
flicted, Johnson  should  be  degraded  from  the  priest- 
hood. The  prelates  who  had  been  charged  by  the 
Ecclesiastical  Commission  with  the  care  of  the  diocese 
of  London  cited  him  before  them  in  the  chapter  house 
of  Saint  Paul's  Cathedral.  The  manner  in  which  he 
went  through  the  ceremony  made  a  deep  impression  on 
many  minds.  When  he  was  stripped  of  his  sacred  robe 
he  exclaimed,  "  You  are  taking  away  my  gown  because 
I  have  tried  to  keep  your  gowns  on  your  backs."  The 
only  part  of  the  formalities  which  seemed  to  distress 
him  was  the  plucking  of  the  Bible  out  of  his  hand. 
He  made  a  faint  struggle  to  retain  the  sacred  book, 
kissed  it,  and  burst  into  tears.  "  You  cannot,"  he 
said,  "  deprive  me  of  the  hopes  which  I  owe  to  it." 
Some  attempts  were  made  to  obtain  a  remission  of  the 
flogging.  A  Roman  Catholic  priest  offered  to  intercede 
in  consideration  of  a  bribe  of  two  hundred  pounds. 
The  money  was  raised  ;  and  the  priest  did  his  best, 
but  in  vain.  "  Mr.  Johnson,"  said  the  King,  "has  the 
spirit  of  a  martyr  ;  and  it  is  fit  that  he  should  be  one." 
William  the  Third  said,  a  few  years  later,  of  one  of  the 
most  acrimonious  and  intrepid  Jacobites,  "  He  has  set 
his  heart  on  being  a  martyr,  and  I  have  set  mine  on 
disappointing  him."  These  two  speeches  would  alone 
suffice  to  explain  the  widely  different  fates  of  the  two 
princes. 


1686.]  JABIES   THE   SECOND.  889 

The  day  appointed  for  the  flogging  came.  A  whip 
of  nine  laslies  was  used.  Three  hundred  and  seventeen 
stripes  were  inflicted  ;  but  tlie  sufferer  never  winced. 
He  afterwards  said  that  the  pain  was  cruel,  but  that, 
as  he  was  dragged  at  tlie  tail  of  the  cart,  he  remem- 
bered haw  patiently  the  cross  had  been  borne  up  Mount 
Calvary,  and  was  so  much  supported  by  the  thought 
that,  but  for  the  fear  of  incurring  the  suspicion  of  vain 
glory,  he  would  have  sung  a  psalm  with  as  firm  and 
cheerful  a  voice  as  if  he  had  been  worshipping  God  in 
the  congregation.  It  is  impossible  not  to  wish  that  so 
much  heroism  had  been  less  alloyed  by  intemperance 
and  intolerance.^ 

Among  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  John- 
son found  no  symi)athy.     He  had  attempted  zeai  of  the 

•/  ^     i-  ''  ^1  Anglican 

to  iustify  rebellion  ;  he  had  even  hinted  ap-  clergy 

.  .    .  ...  against 

probation  of  regicide  ;  and  they  still,  in  spite  Popery. 
of  much  provocation,  clung  to  the  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance.  But  they  saw  with  alarm  and  concern  the 
progress  of  what  they  considered  as  a  noxious  supersti- 
tion, and,  while  they  abjured  all  thought  of  defending 
their  religion  by  the  sword,  betook  themselves  man- 
fully to  weapons  of  a  different  kind.  To  controver- 
preach  against  the  eri'ors  of  Popery  was  now  s'^i  writings. 
regarded  by  them  as  a  point  of  duty  and  a  point  of  hon- 
our. The  London  clergy,  who  were  then  in  abilities 
and  influence  decidedly  at  the  head  of  their  profession, 
set  an  example  which  was  bravely  followed  by  their 
ruder  brethren  all  over  the  country.  Had  only  a  few- 
bold  men  taken  this  freedom,  they  would  probably  have 

1  Life  of  Johnson,  prefixed  to  his  work.s;  Secret  History  of  the  happy 
Revolution,  by  Hugh  Speite;  State  Trials;  Van  Citteis,  |);t^  IfiSG.  Van 
C'ittors  gives  tlie  best  account  of  the  trial.  I  have  seen  a  broadside  which 
confirms  his  narrative. 


390  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

been  at  once  cited  before  the  Ecclesiastical  Commis- 
sion ;  but  it  was  hardly  possible  to  punish  an  offence 
which  was  committed  every  Sunday  by  thousands  of 
divines,  from  Berwick  to  Penzance.  The  presses  of 
the  capital,  of  Oxford,  and  of  Cambridge,  never  rested. 
The  act  which  subjected  literature  to  a  censorship  did 
not  seriously  impede  the  exertions  of  Protestant  con- 
troversialists ;  for  that  Act  contained  a  proviso  in  favour 
of  the  two  Universities,  and  authorised  the  publication 
of  theological  works  licensed  by  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury.  It  was  therefore  out  of  the  power  of  the 
government  to  silence  the  defenders  of  the  established 
religion.  They  were  a  numerous,  an  intrepid,  and  a 
well  appointed  band  of  combatants.  Among  them 
were  eloquent  declaimers,  expert  dialecticians,  scholars 
deeply  read  in  the  writings  of  the  fathers  and  in  all 
parts  of  ecclesiastical  history.  Some  of  them,  at  a 
later  period,  turned  against  one  another  the  formida- 
ble arms  which  they  had  wielded  against  the  common 
enemy,  and  by  their  fierce  contentions  and  insolent 
triumphs  brought  reproach  on  the  Church  which  they 
had  saved.  But  at  present  they  formed  an  united 
phalanx.  In  the  van  appeared  a  rank  of  steady  and 
skilful  veterans,  Tillotson,  Stillingfleet,  Sherlock,  Pri- 
deaux,  Whitby,  Patrick,  Tenison,  Wake.  The  rear  was 
brought  up  by  the  most  distinguished  bachelors  of  arts 
who  were  studying  for  deacon's  orders.  Conspicuous 
amongst  the  recruits  whom  Cambrido-e  sent  to  the  field 
was  a  distinguished  pupil  of  tlie  great  Newton,  Henry 
Wharton,  who  had,  a  few  months  before,  been  senior 
wrangler  of  his  year,  and  whose  early  death  was  soon 
after  deplored  by  men  of  all  parties  as  an  irreparable 
Voss  to  letters.^  Oxford  was  not  less  proud  of  a  youth, 
I  See  the  preface  to  Henry  Wharton's  Posthumous  Sermons. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  391 

whose  great  powers,  first  essayed  in  tliis  conflict,  after- 
wards troubled  the  Church  and  the  State  during  forty 
eventful  years,  Francis  Atterbury,  By  such  men  as 
these  every  question  in  issue  between  the  Papists  and 
the  Protestants  was  debated,  sometimes  in  a  popular 
style  which  boys  and  women  could  comprehend,  some- 
times with  the  utmost  subtlety  of  logic,  and  sometimes 
with  an  immense  display  of  learning.  The  pretensions 
of  the  HoTy  See,  the  authority  of  tradition,  purgatory, 
transubstantiation,  the  saci'ifice  of  the  mass,  the  ado- 
ration of  the  host,  the  denial  of  the  cup  to  the  laity, 
confession,  penance,  indulgences,  extreme  unction,  the 
invocation  of  saints,  the  adoration  of  images,  the  celi- 
bacy of  the  clergy,  the  monastic  vows,  the  practice  of 
celebrating  public  worship  in  a  tongue  unknown  to  the 
multitude,  the  corruptions  of  the  court  of  Rome,  the 
history  of  the  Reformation,  the  characters  of  the  chief 
reformers,  were  copiously  discussed.  Great  numbers 
of  absurd  legends  about  miracles  wrought  by  saints  and 
relics  were  translated  from  the  Italian,  and  published 
as  specimens  of  the  priestcraft  by  which  the  greater 
part  of  Christendom  had  been  fooled.  Of  the  tracts 
put  forth  on  these  subjects  by  Anglican  divines  during 
the  short  reign  of  James  the  Second  many  have  prob- 
ably perislied.  Those  which  may  still  be  found  in  our 
great  libraries  make  up  a  mass  of  near  twenty  thou- 
sand pages. ^ 

The  Roman  Catholics  did  not  yield  the  victory  with- 
out a  struggle.     One  of  them,  named  Henry  The  Roman 
Hills,  had  been  appointed  jirinter  to  the  royal   <^'''"'°>"' 


Divines  over 
matched 


household  and  chapel,  and  had  been  placed 

1  This  I  can  attest  from  my  own  researches.  There  is  an  excellent  col- 
lection in  the  British  Museum.  Birch  tells  us,  in  his  Life  of  Tillntson,  that 
Archbishop  Wake  had  not  been  al)le  to  form  even  a  perfect  catalogue  of 
mU  the  tracts  published  in  this  controversy. 


892  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

by  the  King  at  the  head  of  a  great  office  in  London 
from  which  theological  tracts  came  forth  by  hundreds. 
Obadiah  Walker's  press  was  not  less  active  at  Oxford. 
But,  with  the  exception  of  some  bad  translations  of 
Bossuet's  admirable  works,  these  establishments  put 
forth  nothing  of  the  smallest  value.  It  was  indeed 
impossible  for  any  intelhgent  and  candid  Roman  Cath- 
olic to  deny  that  the  champions  of  his  Church  were, 
in  every  talent  and  acquirement,  completely  over- 
matched. The  ablest  of  them  would  not,  on  the  other 
side,  have  been  considered  as  of  the  third  rate.  Many 
of  them,  even  when  they  had  something  to  say,  knew 
not  how  to  say  it.  They  had  been  excluded  by  their 
relicrion  from  Encrlish  schools  and  universities  ;  nor  had 
they  ever,  till  the  accession  of  James,  found  England  an 
agreeable,  or  even  a  safe,  residence.  They  had  there- 
fore passed  the  greater  part  of  their  lives  on  the  Con- 
tinent, and  had  almost  unlearned  their  mother  tongue. 
When  they  preached,  their  outlandish  accent  moved 
the  derision  of  the  audience.  They  spelt  like  washer- 
women. Their  diction  was  disfigured  by  foreign  idi- 
oms ;  and,  when  they  meant  to  be  eloquent,  they 
imitated,  as  well  as  they  could,  what  was  considered 
as  fine  writing  in  those  Italian  academies  where  rhet- 
oric had  then  reached  the  last  stage  of  corruption. 
Disputants  labouring  under  these  disadvantages  would 
scax'cely,  even  with  truth  on  their  side,  have  been  able 
to  make  head  against  men  whose  style  is  eminently 
distinguished  by  simple  purity  and  grace. -"^ 

1  Cardinal  Howard  spoke  strongly  to  Burnet  at  Rome  on  this  subject. 
Burnet,  i.  662.  There  is  a  curious  passage  to  the  same  effect  in  a  despatch 
ofBarillon:  but  I  have  mislaid  the  reference. 

One  of  the  Roman  Catholic  divines  who  engaged  in  this  controversy,  a 
Jesuit  named  Andrew  Pulton,  whom  Mr.  Oliver,  in  his  biography  of  the 
Order,  pronounces  to  have  been  a  man  of  distinguished  ability,  very  frankly 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  393 

The  situation  of  England  in  the  year  1686  cannot 
be  better  described  than  in  the  words  of  the  French 
Ambassador.  "  The  discontent,"  he  wrote,  "  is  gi'eat 
and  general :  but  the  fear  of  incurring  still  worse  evils 
restrains  all  who  have  anything  to  lose.  The  King 
openly  expresses  his  joy  at  finding  himself  in  a  situ- 
ati(m  to  strike  bold  strokes.  He  likes  to  be  compli- 
mented on  this  svxhject.  He  has  talked  to  me  about  it, 
and  has  assured  me  that  he  will  not  flinch."  ^ 

Meanwhile  in  other  parts  of  the  empire  events  of 
grave  importance  had  taken  place.  The  situ-  gf-^t,,  ^f 
ation  of  the  episcopalian  Protestants  of  Scot-  ''^™"'"<'- 
land  differed  widely  from  that  in  which  their  English 
brethren  stood.  In  the  south  of  the  island  the  religion 
of  the  state  was  the  religion  of  the  people,  and  had  a 
strength  altogether  independent  of  the  strength  derived 

owns  his  deficiencies.  "  A.  P.  having  been  eighteen  years  out  of  his  own 
country,  pretends  not  yet  to  any  perfection  of  the  English  expression  or 
urlhograpliy."  His  spelling  is  indeed  deplorable.  In  one  of  his  letti^rs 
ui  iglit  is  j)ut  for  write,  woed  lor  would.  He  challenged  Tenison  to  dispute 
with  liini  in  Latin,  that  they  might  be  on  equal  terms.  In  a  contemporary 
satire,  entitled  The  Advice,  is  the  following  couplet:  — 

"  Send  Pulton  to  be  lashod  at  Busby's  school, 
That  he  in  print  no  longer  pl.iy  the  fool." 

Another  Konian  Catholic,  named  William  Clench,  wrote  a  treatise  on 
the  Pope's  supremacj-,  and  dedicated  it  to  the  Queen  in  Italian.  The  fol- 
lowing specimen  of  his  style  may  suftice.  "  0  del  sagro  marito  fortnnata 
consorte!  ()  dulcc  allcviauiento  d' atTari  alti !  O  grato  ristoro  di  pensicri 
noiosi,  ni'l  cui  petto  latteo,  lucente  specchio  d'illibata  matronal  pudicizia, 
ncl  cui  seno  odorato,  come  in  porto  d'amor,  si  ritira  il  Giacomo!  0  beata 
regia  coppia !     0  felice  inserto  tra  I'invincibil  leoni  e  le  candide  aqiiile !  " 

Clench'.s  English  is  of  a  piece  with  his  Tuscan.  For  example,  "  Peter 
signifies  an  inexpugnable  rock,  able  to  evacuate  all  the  plots  of  hell's 
divan,  and  naulVairate  all  the  lurid  designs  of  empoisoned  heretics." 

Another  Roman  Catholic  treatise,  entitled  "  The  Church  of  England  truly 
represented,"  begins  by  informing  us  that  "the  ignis  fatuus  of  reformation, 
which  had  grown  to  a  cnniet  by  many  acts  of  spoil  and  ra|iine,  ha'l  been 
ushered  into  Kngland,  purified  of  the  filth  which  it  had  contracted  among 
the  lakes  of  the  Alp<." 

1  Barillon,  .luly  ^n    ig8G. 


394  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

from  the  support  of  the  government.  The  sincere  con- 
formists were  far  more  numerous  than  the  Papists  and 
the  Protestant  Dissenters  taken  together.  The  Estab- 
lished Church  of  Scotland  was  the  Church  of  a  minor- 
ity. The  lowland  population  was  generally  attached 
to  the  Presbyterian  discipline.  Prelacy  was  abhorred 
by  the  great  body  of  Scottish  Protestants,  both  as  art 
unscriptural  and  as  a  foreign  institution.  It  was  re- 
garded by  the  disciples  of  Knox  as  a  relic  of  the 
abominations  of  Babylon  the  Great.  It  painfully  re- 
minded a  people  proud  of  the  memory  of  Wallace  and 
Bruce  that  Scotland,  since  her  sovereigns  had  succeeded 
to  a  fairer  inheritance,  had  been  independent  in  name 
only.  The  episcopal  polity  was  also  closely  associated 
in  the  public  mind  with  all  the  evils  produced  by 
twenty-five  years  of  corrupt  and  cruel  maladministra- 
tion. Nevertheless  this  polity  stood,  though  on  a  nar- 
row basis  and  amidst  fearful  storms,  tottering  indeed, 
yet  upheld  by  the  civil  magistrate,  and  leaning  for  sup- 
port, whenever  danger  became  serious,  on  the  power 
of  England.  The  records  of  the  Scottish  Parliament 
were  thick  set  with  laws  denouncing  veno-eance  on  those 
who  in  any  direction  strayed  from  the  prescribed  pale. 
By  an  Act  passed  in  the  time  of  Knox,  and  breathing 
his  spirit,  it  was  a  high  crime  to  hear  mass,  and  the  third 
offence  was  capital.^  An  Act  recently  passed,  at  the 
instance  of  James,  made  it  death  to  preach  in  any  Pres- 
byterian conventicle  whatever,  and  even  to  attend  such 
a  conventicle  in  the  open  air.^  The  Eucharist  was  not, 
as  in  England,  degraded  into  a  civil  test ;  but  no  per- 
son could  hold  any  office,  could  sit  in  Parliament,  or 
could  even  vote  for  a  member  of  Parliament,  without 

1  Act  Pari.  Aug.  24.  1560;  Dec.  15.  1567. 

2  Act  Pari.  May  8.  1685. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  o95 

subscribing,  under  the  sanction  of  an  oath,  a  declara- 
tion which  condemned  in  the  strongest  terms  the  prin- 
ciples both  of  the  Papists  and  of  the  Covenanters.^ 

In  the  Privy  Council  of  Scotland  there  were  two 
parties  corresponding  to  the  two  parties  which  Queens- 
were  contending  against  each  other  at  White-  ^^"^" 
hall.  William  Douglas,  Duke  of  Queensberry,  was 
Lord  Treasurer,  and  had,  during  some  years,  been  con- 
sidered as  first  minister.  He  was  nearly  connected  by 
affinity,  by  similarity  of  opinions,  and  by  similarity  of 
temper,  with  the  Treasurer  of  England.  Both  were 
Tories  :  both  were  men  of  hot  temper  and  strong  prej- 
udices ;  both  were  ready  to  support  their  master  in 
any  attack  on  the  civil  liberties  of  his  people  ;  but  both 
were  sincerely  attached  to  the  Established  Clmrch. 
Queensberry  had  eai-ly  notified  to  the  court  that,  if 
any  innovation  affecting  that  Church  were  contem- 
plated, to  such  innovation  he  could  be  no  party.  But 
among  his  colleagues  Avere  several  men  not  less  uiijirin- 
cipled  than  Sunderland.  In  truth  the  Council  chamber 
at  Edinburgh  had  been,  during  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
a  seminaiy  of  all  public  and  all  private  vices;  and  some 
of  the  politicians  whose  character  had  been  formed  there 
had  a  peculiar  hardness  of  heart  and  forehead  to  which 
Westminster,  even  in  that  bad  age,  could  hardly  show 
anything  quite  equal.  The  Chancellor,  James  p^^.^^ 
Drummond,  Earl  of  Perth,  and  his  brother, 
the  Secretary  of  State,  John  Lord  IMelfort,  ^^"^^f"^*- 
were  bent  on  supplanting  Queensberry.  The  Chan- 
cellor had  already  an  unquestionable  title  to  the  royal 
favour.  He  had  broujiht  into  use  a  little  steel  thumb- 
screw  which  gave  such  exquisite  torment  that  it  had 
wruno;   confessions    even    out    of  men    on  whom    Hig 

1  Act  Pari.  Aug.  31.  1681. 


396  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

Majesty's  favourite  boot  had  been  tried  in  vain.^  But 
it  was  well  known  that  even  barbarity  was  not  so  sure 
their  apos-  ^  ^^^J  ^^  ^^^^  heart  of  James  as  apostasy.  To 
*^^^'  apostasy,   therefore,    Perth  and  Melfort  re- 

sorted with  a  certain  audacious  baseness  which  no  Eng- 
lish statesman  could  hope  to  emulate.  They  declared 
that  the  papers  found  in  the  strong  box  of  Charles  the 
Second  had  converted  them  both  to  the  true  faith  ;  and 
they  began  to  confess  and  to  hear  mass.^  How  little 
conscience  had  to  do  with  Perth's  change  of  religion  he 
amply  proved  by  taking  to  wife,  a  few  weeks  later,  in 
direct  defiance  of  the  laws  of  the  Church  which  he  had 
just  joined,  a  lady  who  was  his  cousin  german,  with- 
out waiting  for  a  dispensation.  When  the  good  Pope 
learned  this,  he  said,  with  scorn  and  indignation  Avhich 
well  became  him,  that  this  was  a  strange  sort  of  con- 
version.^ But  James  was  more  easily  satisfied.  The 
apostates  presented  themselves  at  Whitehall,  and  there 
received  such  assurances  of  his  favour,  that  they  ven- 
tured to  brine;  direct  charges  against  the  Treasurer. 
Those  charges,  however,  were  so  evidently  frivolous 
that  James  was  forced  to  acquit  the  accused  minister ; 
and  many  thought  that  the  Chancellor  had  ruined  him- 
self by  his  malignant  eagerness  to  ruin  his  rival.  There 
were  a  few,  however,  who  judged  more  correctly. 
Halifax,  to  whom  Perth  expressed  some  apprehensions, 
answered  with  a  sneer  that  there  was  no  danger.  "  Be 
of  good  cheer,  my  Lord  ;  thy  faith  hath  made  thee 
whole."  The  prediction  was  correct.  Perth  and  Mel- 
fort went  back  to  Edinburgh,  the  real  heads  of  the 
government  of  their  country.*  Another  member  of  the 
Scottish    Privy    Council,   Alexander    Stuart,   Earl    of 

1  Burnet,  i.  584.  2  ibid.  i.  652.  653. 

8  Ibid.  i.  678.  *  Ibid.  i.  U53. 


I 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  397 

Murray,  tlie  descendant  and  heir  of  tlie  Regent,  ab- 
jured the  religion  of  which  his  ilkistrious  ancestor  had 
been  the  foremost  champion,  and  declared  himself  a 
member  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Devoted  as  Queens- 
berry  had  always  been  to  the  cause  of  prerogative,  he 
could  not  stand  his  ground  against  competitors  who  were 
willing  to  pay  such  a  price  for  the  favour  of  the  court. 
He  had  to  endure  a  succession  of  mortifications  and  hu- 
miliations similar  to  those  which,  about  the  same  time, 
began  to  embitter  the  life  of  his  friend  Roches-  Favour 
ter.  Royal  letters  came  down  authorising  theRoumn 
Papists  to  hold  offices  without  taking  the  test.   ^^'^°^'' '" 


ligion  in 
Scotland. 


The  clergy  were  strictly  charged  not  to  re- 
flect on  the  Roman  Catholic  religion  in  their  discourses. 
The  Chancellor  took  on  himself  to  send  the  macers  of 
the  Privy  Council  round  to  the  few  printers  and  book- 
sellers who  could  then  be  found  in  Edinburoli,  chare- 
ing  them  not  to  publish  any  work  without  his  license. 
It  was  well  understood  that  this  order  was  intended 
to  prevent  the  circulation  of  Protestant  treatises.  One 
honest  stationer  told  the  messengei-s  that  he  had  in  his 
shop  a  book  which  reflected  in  very  coarse  terms  on 
Popery,  and  begged  to  know  whether  he  might  sell  it. 
They  asked  to  see  it ;  and  he  showed  them  a  copy 
of  the  Bible.i  A  cargo  of  images,  beads,  crosses  and 
ctnsers  arrived  at  Leith  directed  to  Lord  Perth.  The 
imj)ortation  of  such  articles  had  long  been  considered 
as  illegal  ;  but  now  the  officers  of  the  customs  allowed 
the  superstitious  garments  and  trinkets  to  pass.^  In  a 
short  time  it  was  known  that  a  Popish  chapel  had  been 
iitlea  up  in  the  Chancellor's  house,  and  that  mass  was 
/egularly  said  there.  The  mob  rose.  The  jy^^^^^ 
mansion  where  the  idolatrous  rites  were  cele-  K'1'"*'«'8'» 
1  Fouutaiuball,  Jan.  28.  108^.  2  Fountainhall,  Jan.  11.  108^. 


398  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

brated  was  fiercely  attacked.  The  iron  bars  which  pro- 
tected the  windows  were  wrenched  off.  Lady  Perth 
and  some  of  lier  female  friends  wei'e  pelted  with  mud. 
One  rioter  was  seized,  and  ordered  by  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil to  be  whipped.  His  fellows  rescued  him  and  beat 
the  hangman.  The  city  was  all  night  in  confusion. 
The  students  of  the  University  mingled  with  the  crowd 
and  animated  the  tumult.  Zealous  burghers  drank  the 
health  of  the  college  lads  and  confusion  to  Papists,  and 
encouraged  each  other  to  face  the  troops.  The  troops 
were  already  under  arms.^  They  were  received  with 
a  shower  of  stones,  which  wounded  an  officer.  Orders 
were  given  to  fire ;  and  several  citizens  were  killed.  The 
disturbance  was  serious  ;  but  the  Drummonds,  inflamed 
by  resentment  and  ambition,  exaggerated  it  strangely. 
Queensberry  observed  that  their  reports  would  lead  any 
person,  who  liad  not  witnessed  what  had  passed,  to  be- 
lieve that  a  sedition  as  formidable  as  that  of  Masaniello 
had  been  raging  at  Edinburgh.  The  brothers  in  re- 
turn accused  the  Treasurer,  not  only  of  extenuating  the 
crime  of  the  insurgents,  but  of  having  himself  prompted 
it,  and  did  all  in  their  power  to  obtain  evidence  of  his 
guilt.  One  of  the  ringleaders,  who  had  been  taken,  was 
offered  a  pardon  if  he  would  own  that  Queensberry  had 
set  him  on  ;  but  the  same  religious  enthusiasm,  which 
had  impelled  the  unhappy  prisoner  to  criminal  violence, 
prevented  him  fi:om  purchasing  his  life  by  a  calumny. 
He  and  several  of  his  accomplices  were  hanged.  A 
soldier,  who  was  accused  of  exclaiming,  during  the 
affray,  that  he  should  like  to  run  his  sword  through  a 
Papist,  was  shot ;  and  Edinburgh  was  again  quiet : 
out  the  sufferers  were  regarded  as  martyrs  ;  and  the 

1  [Two  lines  in  the  first  five  editions  were  omitted  on  the  final  revision, 
for  reasons  stated  in  the  author's  note,  supra,  page  155.] 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  399 

Popish  Chancellor  became  an  object  of  mortal  hatnid, 
which  in  no  long  time  was  largely  gratified.^ 

The  Kino;  was  much  incensed.  The  news  of  the 
tumult  reached  him  when  the  Queen,  assisted  Anger  of  the 
by  the  Jesuits,  had  just  ti:iumphed  over  Lady  ^'"^• 
Dorchester  and  her  Protestant  allies.  The  malecon- 
tents  should  find,  he  declared,  that  the  only  effect  of 
the  resistance  offered  to  his  will  was  to  make  him  more 
and  more  resolute.^  He  sent  orders  to  the  Scottish 
Council  to  punish  the  guilty  with  the  utmost  severity, 
and  to  make  unsparing  use  of  the  boot.^  He  pretended 
to  be  fully  convinced  of  the  Treasurer's  innocence,  and 
wrote  to  that  minister  in  gracious  words  ;  but  the  gra- 
cious words  were  accompanied  by  ungracious  acts. 
The  Scottish  Treasury  was  put  into  commission  in  spite 
of  the  earnest  remonstrances  of  Rochester,  who  proba- 
bly saw  his  own  fate  prefigured  in  that  of  his  kinsman.* 
Queensberry  was,  indeed,  named  First  Commissioner, 
and  was  made  President  of  the  Privy  Council :  but  his 
fall,  though  thus  broken,  was  still  a  fall.  He  was  also 
removed  from  the  government  of  the  castle  of  Edin- 
burgh, and  was  succeeded  in  that  confidential  post  by 
the  Duke  of  Gordon,  a  Roman  Catholic.^ 

And  now  a  letter  arrived  from  London,  fully  explain- 
ing to  the  Scottish  Privy  Council  the  inten-  iiis  plana 
tions  of  the  Kino;.    What  he  wanted  was  that  Scotland. 
the  Roman  Catholics  should  be  exempted  from  all  laws 

1  Fountainhall,  Jan.  31.  and  Fub.  1.  1G8|.;  Burnet,  i.  678. ;  Trials  of 
David  Mowbray  and  Alexander  Keith,  in  the  Collection  of  State  Trials; 
Eonrepaux,  Feb.  11. 

2  Lewis  to  Barillon,  Feb.  i|.  1686. 

8  Fountainhall,  Feb.  16.;  VVodrow,  book  iii.  chap.  x.  sec.  3.  "We  re- 
quire," Ilis  Majesty  graciously  wrote,  "  that  you  spare  no  legal  trial  by 
torture  or  otherwise." 

*  Bonrepaux,  Feb.  J|.  1686. 

6  Fountainhall,  Jlartli  11.  KiSC;  Adda,  March  i  . 

VOh.  II.  26 


400  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

imposing  penalties  and  disabilities  on  account  of  non- 
conformity, but  that  the  persecution  of  the  Covenanters 
should  go  on  without  mitigation.^  This  scheme  en- 
countered strenuous  opposition  in  the  Council.  Some 
niembers  were  unwilling  to  see  the  existing  laws  re- 
laxed. Others,  who  wei'e  by  no  means  averse  to 
relaxation,  felt  that  it  would  be  monstrous  to  ad- 
mit Roman  Catholics  to  the  hio-hest  honours  of  the 
state,  and  yet  to  leave  unrepealed  the  Act  which  made 
it  death  to  attend  a  Presbyterian  conventicle.  The 
answer  of  the  board  was,  therefoi*e,  less  obsequious 
than  usual.  The  King  in  reply  sharply  reprimanded 
Deputation  his  uudutiful  Couucillors,  and  ordered  three 
privj-  coun-  of  them,  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  Sir  George 
to  London.  Lockhart,  and  General  Drummond,  to  attend 
him  at  Westminster.  Hamilton's  abilities  and  knowl- 
edge, though  by  no  means  such  as  would  have  sufficed 
to  raise  an  obscure  man  to  eminence,  appeared  highly 
respectable  in  one  who  was  premier  peer  of  Scotland. 
Lockhart  had  loner  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  first 
jurists,  logicians,  and  orators  that  his  country  had  pro- 
duced, and  enjoyed  also  that  sort  of  consideration  which 
is  derived  from  large  possessions  ;  for  his  estate  was 
such  as  at  that  time  very  few  Scottish  nobles  possessed.^ 
He  had  been  lately  appointed  President  of  the  Court 
of  Session.  Drummond,  a  cousin  of  Perth  and  Mel- 
fort,  was  commander  of  the  forces  in  Scotland.  He 
was  a  loose  and  profane  man  :  but  a  sense  of  honour 
which  his  two  kinsmen  wanted  restrained  him  from  a 
public  apostasy.  He  lived  and  died,  in  the  significant 
phrase  of  one  of  his  countrymen,  a  bad  Christian,  but 
a  good  Protestant. 3 

1  This  letter  is  dated  March  4.  1686. 

2  Barillon,  April  ^|.  1«86;  Buraet,  i.  370. 

8  The  words  are  fn  a  letter  of  Johnstone  of  Waristoun. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  401 

Jamrs  was  pleased  by  the  dutiful  language  which  the 
three  Councilloi's  used  when  first  tliey  appeared  before 
him.  He  spoke  higldy  of  them  to  Barillon,  and  partic- 
ularly extolled  Lockliart  as  the  ablest  and  most  eloquent 
Scotchman  living.  They  soon  proved,  however,  less 
tractable  than  had  been  expected  ;  and  it  was  rumoured 
at  court  that  they  had  been  perverted  by  the  company 
which  they  had  kept  in  London.  Hamilton  lived  much 
with  zealous  churchmen  ;  and  it  might  be  feared  that 
Lockhart,  who  was  related  to  the  Wharton  family,  had 
fallen  into  still  worse  society.  In  truth  it  was  natural 
that  statesmen  fresh  from  a  country  where  opposition  in 
any  other  form  than  that  of  insurrection  and  assassina- 
tion had  long  been  almost  unknown,  and  where  all  that 
was  not  lawless  fury  was  abject  submission,  should  have 
been  struck  by  the  earnest  and  stubborn,  yet  sober,  dis- 
content which  pervaded  England,  and  should  have  been 
emboldened  to  try  the  experiment  of  constitutional 
resistance  to  the  royal  will.  They  indeed  declared 
themselves  willing;  to  grant  large  relief  to  the  Roman 
Catholics  ;  but  on  two  conditions  ;  first,  that  similar 
indulgence  sliould  be  extended  to  the  Calvinistic  secta- 
ties  ;  and,  secondly,  that  the  King  should  bind  himself 
by  a  solemn  promise  not  to  attempt  anything  to  the 
prejudice  of  the  Protestant  religion. 

Both  conditions  wei-e  highly  distasteful  to  James. 
He  reluctantly  agreed,  however,  after  a  dis-  Th«irncgo- 

,.,,',  ,     ■,  ,  .  .        tiations  with 

pute  which  lasted  several  days,  that  some  m-  the  King, 
dulgence  should  be  granted  to  the  Presbyterians :  but 
he  would  by  no  means  consent  to  allow  them  the  full 
liix'rty  which  he  demanded  for  members  of  his  own 
communion.^     To  the  second  condition  proposed  by  the 

1  Some  words  of  Barillon  deserve  to  be  transcribed.     They  would  alone 
eufficc  to  decide  a  question  which  ignorance  and  parly  spirit  have  done 


402  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  L*^H.  VI 

three  Scottish  Counoillors  he  positively  refiised  to  listen. 
The  Protestant  religion,  he  said,  was  false  ;  and  he 
would  not  give  any  guarantee  that  he  would  not  use 
his  power  to  the  prejudice  of  a  false  religion.  The 
altercation  was  long,  and  was  not  brought  to  a  conclu- 
sion satisfactory  to  either  party. ^ 

The  time  fixed  for  the  meetino;  of  the  Scottish  Estate?* 
Meeting  of  drcw  near ;  and  it  was  necessary  that  the 
Estates.  three  Councillors  should  leave  London  to  at- 
tend their  parliamentary  duty  at  Edinburgh.  On  this 
occasion  another  affront  was  offered  to  Queensberry. 
In  the  late  session  he  had  held  the  office  of  Lord  Hi^h 
Commissioner,  and  had  in  that  capacitj'-  represented  the 
majesty  of  the  absent  King.  This  dignity,  the  greatest 
to  which  a  Scottish  noble  could  aspire,  was  now  trans- 
ferred to  the  renegade  Murray. 

On  the  twenty-ninth  of  April  the  Parliament  met  at 
They  prove  Edinburgh.  A  letter  from  the  King  was  read. 
refractory,  jj^  exhortcd  the  Estatcs  to  give  relief  to  his 
Roman  Catholic  subjects,  and  offered  in  return  a  free 
trade  with  England  and  an  amnesty  for  political  of- 
fences. A  committee  was  appointed  to  draw  up  an  an- 
swer. Tliat  committee,  though  named  by  Murray,  and 
composed  of  Privy  Councillors  and  courtiers,  framed  a 
reply,  full  indeed  of  dutiful  and  respectful  expressions, 
yet  clearly  indicating  a  determination  to  refuse  what 
the  King  demanded.  The  Estates,  it  was  said,  would 
go  as  far  as  their  consciences  would  allow  to  meet  His 
Majesty's  wishes  respecting  his  subjects  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  religion.      These  expressions  were  far  from 

much  to  perplex.    "  Cette  libertc?  accord^e  aux  nonconform istes  a  faite  una 
grande  difficulte,  et  a  ^te  d(5battue  pendant  plusieurs  jours.      Le  Roy 
d'Angleterre  avoit  fort  envie  que  les  Catholiques  eussent  seuls  la  liberty 
de  I'exercice  de  leur  religion."     April  1-9    1686. 
1  Barillon,  April  ||..  1G86;   Van  Cittefs,  April  13.  .|a.  May  -9-. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  403 

satisfying  the  Chancellor ;  yet,  such  as  they  were,  he  was 
foi'ced  to  content  himself  with  them,  and  even  had  some 
difficulty  in  persuading  the  Parliament  to  adopt  them. 
Objection  was  taken  by  some  zealous  Protestants  to  the 
mention  made  of  the  Roman  Catholic  religion.  There 
was  no  such  religion.  There  Avas  an  idolatrous  apos- 
tasy, which  the  laws  punished  with  the  halter,  and  to 
which  it  did  not  become  Christian  men  to  give  flatter- 
ing titles.  To  call  such  a  superstition  Catholic  was  to 
give  up  the  whole  question  which  was  at  issue  between 
Rome  and  the  reformed  Churches.  The  offer  of  a  free 
trade  with  Eno-land  was  treated  as  an  insult.  "  Our 
fathers,"  said  one  orator,  "  sold  their  King  for  southern 
gold ;  and  we  still  lie  under  the  reproach  of  that  foul 
bargain.  Let  it  not  be  said  of  us  that  we  have  sold 
our  God  !  "  Sir  John  Lauder  of  Fountainhall,  one  of 
the  Senators  of  the  College  of  Justice,  suggested  the 
words,  "  the  persons  commonly  called  Roman  Catho- 
lics." "  Would  you  nickname  His  Majesty  ?  "  ex- 
claimed the  Chancellor.  The  answer  drawn  by  the 
committee  was  carried  ;  but  a  large  and  respectable  mi- 
nority voted  against  the  proposed  words  as  too  courtly.^ 
It  was  remarked  that  the  representatives  of  the  towns 
were,  almost  to  a  man,  against  the  government.  Hith- 
erto those  members  had  been  of  small  account  in  the 
Parliament,  and  had  generally  been  considered  as  the 
retainers  of  ])owerful  noblemen.  They  now  showed, 
for  the  first  time,  an  ind(>pendence,  a  resolution,  and  a 
spirit  of  combination  which  alarmed  the  court.^ 

The  answer  was  so  unpleasing  to  James  that  he  did 
not  suffer  it  to  be  ])rinted  in  the  Gazette.  Soon  he 
learned  that  a  law,  such  as  he  wished  to  see  passed, 
would  not  even  be  brought  in.     The  Lords  of  Articles, 

1  Fountainhall,  May  G.  1686.  2  ibid.  June  15  1686. 


404  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

whose  business  was  to  draw  up  the  acts  on  which  the 
Estates  were  afterwards  to  deliberate,  were  virtually 
nominated  by  himself.  Yet  even  the  Lords  of  Articles 
proved  refractory.  When  they  met,  the  three  Privy 
Councillors  who  had  lately  returned  from  London  took 
the  lead  in  opposition  to  the  royal  will.  Hamilton  de- 
clared plainly  that  he  could  not  do  what  was  asked. 
He  was  a  faithful  and  loyal  subject ;  but  there  was  a 
limit  imposed  by  conscience.  "  Conscience  !  "  said  the 
Chancellor  :  "  conscience  is  a  vague  word,  which  sig- 
nifies any  thing  or  nothing."  Lockhart,  who  sate  in 
Parliament  as  representative  of  the  great  county  of 
Lanark,  struck  in.  "If  conscience,"  he  said,  "be  a 
word  without  meaning,  we  will  change  it  for  another 
phrase  which,  I  hope,  means  something.  For  con- 
science let  us  put  the  fundamental  laws  of  Scotland." 
These  words  raised  a  fierce  debate.  General  Drum- 
mond,  who  represented  Perthshire,  declared  that  he 
ao-reed  with  Hamilton  and  Lockhart.  Most  of  the 
Bishops  present  took  the  same  side.^ 

I  Van  Citters,  May  ^1.  1686.  Van  Citters  informed  the  States  that  he 
liad  his  intelligence  from  a  sure  hand.  1  will  transcribe  part  of  his  narra- 
tive. It  is  an  amusing  specimen  of  the  pyebald  dialect  in  which  the  Dutch 
diplomatists  of  that  age  corresponded. 

"  Des  konigs  missive,  boven  en  behalven  den  Hoog  Commissaris  aen- 
sprake,  aen  het  parlement  afgesonden,  gelyck  dat  altoos  gehruyckelyck  is, 
waerby  Syne  Majesteyt  nu  in  genere  versocht  hieft  de  mitigatie  der  rigour- 
euse  ofte  sanglante  wetten  van  het  Eyck  jegens  het  Pausdom,  in  het  Gen- 
erale  Comitde  des  Articles  (soo  men  het  daer  naemt)  na  ordre  gestelt  en 
gelesen  synde,  in  't  voteren,  den  Hertog  van  Hamilton  onder  anderen  klaer 
uyt  seyde  dat  hy  daertoe  niet  sonde  verstaen,  dat  hy  anders  genegen  was 
den  konig  in  alien  voorval  getrouw  te  dienen  volgens  het  dictamen  syner 
conscientie:  't  gene  reden  gaf  aen  de  Lord  Canceller  de  Grave  Perts  te 
seggen  dat  het  woort  conscientie  niets  en  beduyde,  en  alleen  een  individuum 
vagum  was,  waerop  der  Chevalier  Locquard  dan  vcrder  gingh;  wil  man 
niet  verstaen  de  betyckenis  van  het  woordt  conscientie,  sno  sal  ik  in  forti- 
oribus  seggen  dat  wy  meynen  volgens  de  fondamentale  wetten  van  het 
ryck." 

There  is,  in  the  Hind  Let  Loose,  a  curious  passage  to  which  I  should  have 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  405 

It  was  plain  that,  even  in  the  Committee  of  Articles, 
James  could  not  command  a  majority.  He  was  morti- 
fied and  irritated  by  the  tidings.  He  held  warm  and 
menacing  language,  and  punished  some  of  his  mutinous 
servants,  in  the  hope  that  the  rest  Avould  take  warning. 
Several  persons  were  dismissed  from  tlie  Council  board. 
Several  were  deprived  of  pensions,  which  formed  an  im- 
portant part  of  their  income.  Sir  George  Mackenzie 
of  Rosehauo:h  was  the  most  distinouished  victim.  He 
had  lono;  held  the  office  of  Lord  Advocate,  and  had 
taken  such  a  part  in  the  persecution  of  the  Covenant- 
ers that  to  this  day  he  holds,  in  the  estimation  of  the 
austere  and  godly  peasantiy  of  Scotland,  a  place  not 
far  removed  from  the  unenviable  eminence  occupied  by 
Claverhouse.  The  legal  learning  of  Mackenzie  was 
not  profound  :  but,  as  a  scholar,  a  wit,  and  an  orator, 
he  stood  high  in  the  opinion  of  his  countrymen  ;  and 
his  renown  had  spread  even  to  the  coffeehouses  of 
London  and  the  cloisters  of  Oxford.  The  remains  of 
his  forensic  speeches  prove  him  to  have  been  a  man 
of  parts,  but  are  somewhat  disfigured  by  what  he 
doubtless  considered  as  Ciceronian  graces,  interjections 
which  show  more  art  than  passion,  and  elaborate  amj)li- 
fications,  in  which  epithet  rises  above  epithet  in  weari- 
some climax.  He  had  now,  for  the  first  time,  been 
found  scrupulous.  He  was,  therefore,  in  spite  of  all 
his  claims  on  the  gratitude  of  the  government,  deprived 
of  his  office.  He  retired  into  the  country,  and  soon 
af\er  went  up  to  London  for  the  purjiose  of  clearing 
himself,  but  was  refused  admission  to  the  royal  pres- 

given  no  credit,  but  for  this  despatch  of  Van  Citters.  "  They  cannot  endure 
HO  niudi  as  to  hear  of  the  name  of  conscience.  One  that  was  well  acquaint 
with  tile  Council's  humour  in  tills  point  told  a  gentleman  tliat  was  f;"'"{i 
before  them,  '  I  be>eecii  you,  wtiatevcr  you  do,  speait  iiotiiing  of  conscienca 
before  the  Lords,  for  tliey  cannot  abide  to  hear  that  word.'  " 


406  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

ence.i  While  the  King  was  thus  trying  to  terrify  the 
Lords  of  Articles  into  submission,  the  popular  voice 
encouraged  them  to  persist.  The  utmost  exertions 
of  the  Chancellor  could  not  prevent  the  national  sen- 
timent from  expressing  itself  through  the  pulpit  and 
the  press.  One  tract,  written  with  such  boldness  and 
acrimony  that  no  printer  dared  to  put  it  in  type,  was 
widely  circulated  in  manuscript.  The  papers  which 
appeared  on  the  other  side  of  the  question  had  much 
less  effect,  though  they  were  disseminated  at  the  public 
charge,  and  though  the  Scottish  defenders  of  the  gov- 
ernment were  assisted  by  an  English  auxiliary  of  great 
note,  Lestrange,  who  had  been  sent  down  to  Edin- 
burgh, and  lodged  in  Holyrood  House.^ 

At  length,  after  three  weeks  of  debate,  the  Lords  of 
Articles  came  to  a  decision.  They  proposed  merely 
that  Roman  Catholics  should  be  permitted  to  worship 
God  in  private  houses  without  incurring  any  penalty  , 
and  it  soon  appeared  that,  far  as  this  measure  was  fi'om 
coming  up  to  the  King's  demands  and  expectations,  the 
Estates  either  would  not  pass  it  at  all,  or  would  pass  it 
with  great  restrictions  and  modifications. 

While  the  contest  lasted  the  anxiety  in  London  was 
intense.  Every  report,  every  line,  from  Edinburgh 
was  eagerly  devoured.  One  day  the  story  ran  that 
Hamilton  had  given  way  and  that  the  government 
would  carry  every  point.  Then  came  intelligence  that 
the  opposition  had  rallied  and  was  more  obstinate  than 
ever.  At  the  most  critical  moment  orders  were  sent 
to  the  postoffice  that  the  bags  from  Scotland  should  be 
transmitted  to  Whitehall.  Durino-  a  whole  week  not  a 
single  private  letter  from  beyond  the  Tweed  was  de- 
livered in  London.  In  our  age  such  an  interruption  of 
1  Fountainhall,  May  17.  1686.  2  Wodrow,  III.  x.  3. 


J 


are 

lied. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  407 

communication  would  throw  the  whole  island  into  con- 
fusion :  but  there  was  then  so  little  trade  and  corre- 
spondence between  England  and  Scotland  that  the 
inconvenience  was  probably  much  smaller  than  has 
been  often  occasioned  in  our  own  time  by  a  short  de- 
lay in  the  arrival  of  the  Indian  mail.  While  the  ordi- 
nary channels  of  information  were  thus  closed,  the 
crowd  in  the  galleries  of  Whitehall  observed  with  at- 
tention the  countenances  of  the  King  and  his  ministers. 
It  was  noticed,  Avith  great  satisfaction,  that,  after  every 
express  from  the  North,  the  enemies  of  the  Protestant 
religion  looked  more  and  more  gloomy.  At  length, 
to  the  general  joy,  it  was  announced  that  iheyi 
the  struggle  was  over,  that  the  government  '^'^°"'^"* 
had  been  unable  to  carry  its  measures,  and  that  the 
Lord  High  Commissioner  had  adjourned  the  Parlia- 
ment.i 

If  James  had  not  been  proof  to  all  warning,  these 
events  would  have  sufficed  to  warn  him.  A  Arbitrary 
few  months  before  this  time  the  most  obse-  goverimient 
quious  of  English  Parliaments  had  refused  to  i^s™'^'^"'^- 
submit  to  his  pleasure.  But  the  most  obsequious  of 
English  Parliaments  might  be  regarded  as  an  indepen- 
dent and  even  as  a  mutinous  assembly  when  compared 
with  any  Parhament  that  had  ever  sate  in  Scotland  ;  and 
the  servile  spii-it  of  Scottish  Parliaments  was  always  to 
be  found  in  the  highest  perfection,  extracted  and  con- 
densed, among  the  Lords  of  Articles.  Yet  even  the 
Lords  of  Articles  had  been  refractory.  It  was  plain 
that  all  those  classes,  all  those  institutions,  which,  up  to 
this  year,  had  been  considered  as  the  strongest  supports 
of  monarchical  power,  must,  if  the  King  persisted  in 

1  Van  Citters,  ^^-i  June   i  .,  June  *,  1686;  Fourtainhall.  June  15.,- 

'    Junt*.  7.  TT  '  t  -f 

Luttreirs  Diary,  June  2.  l(i. 


408  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

his  insane  policy,  be  reckoned  as  parts  of  the  strength 
of  the  opposition.  All  these  signs,  however,  were  lost 
upon  him.  To  every  expostulation  he  had  one  answer : 
he  would  never  give  way ;  for  concession  had  ruined 
his  father ;  and  his  unconquerable  firmness  was  loudly 
applauded  by  the  French  embassy  and  by  the  Jesuitical 
cabal. 

He  now  proclaimed  that  he  had  been  only  too  gra- 
cious when  he  had  condescended  to  ask  the  assent  of 
the  Scottish  Estates  to  his  wishes.  His  prerogative 
would  enable  him  not  only  to  protect  those  whom  he 
favoured,  but  to  punish  those  who  had  crossed  him. 
He  was  confident  that,  in  Scotland,  his  dispensing 
power  would  not  be  questioned  by  any  court  of  law. 
There  was  a  Scottish  Act  of  Supremacy  which  gave 
to  the  sovereifjn  such  a  control  over  tlie  Church  as 
might  have  satisfied  Henry  the  Eighth.  Accordingly 
Papists  were  admitted  in  crowds  to  offices  and  honours. 
The  Bishop  of  Dunkeld,  who,  as  a  Lord  of  Parliament, 
had  opposed  the  government,  was  arbitrarily  ejected 
from  his  see,  and  a  successor  was  appointed.  Queens- 
berry  was  stripped  of  all  his  employments,  and  was 
ordered  to  remain  at  Edinburgh  till  the  accounts  of  the 
Treasury  during  his  administration  had  been  examined 
and  approved.^  As  the  representatives  of  the  towns 
had  been  found  the  most  unmanageable  part  of  the 
Parliament,  it  was  determined  to  make  a  revolution 
in  every  burgh  throughout  the  kingdom.  A  similar 
change  had  recently  been  effected  in  England  by  judi- 
cial sentences  :  but  in  Scotland  a  simple  mandate  of 
the  prince  was  thought  sufficient.  All  elections  of 
magistrates  and  of  town  councils  were  prohibited  ;  and 
the  King  assumed  to  himself  the  right  of  filhng  up  tlie 

1  Fountainhall,  June  21.  1636. 


1686.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  409 

chief  municipal  offices.^  In  a  formal  letter  to  the  Privy 
Council  he  annomiced  his  intention  to  fit  up  a  Roman 
Catliolic  chapel  in  his  palace  of  Holyrood  ;  and  he  gaA-e 
orders  that  the  Judges  should  he  directed  to  treat  all 
the  laws  against  Papists  as  null,  on  pain  of  his  high 
displeasure.  He  however  comforted  the  Protestant 
Episcopalians  by  assuring  them  that,  though  he  was 
determined  to  protect  the  Roman  Catholic  Churci) 
against  them,  he  Avas  equally  determined  to  protect 
them  against  any  encroachment  on  the  part  of  the  fa- 
natics. To  this  communication  Perth  proposed  an 
answer  couched  in  the  most  servile  terms.  The  Coun- 
cil now  contained  many  Papists;  the  Protestant  mem- 
bers who  still  had  seats  had  been  cowed  by  the  King's 
obstinacy  and  seventy  ;  and  only  a  few  faint  murmurs 
were  heard.  Hamilton  threw  out  against  the  dispens- 
ing power  some  hints  which  he  made  haste  to  explain 
away.  Lockhart  said  that  he  would  lose  his  head 
rather  than  sign  such  a  letter  as  the  Chancellor  had 
drawn,  but  took  care  to  say  this  in  a  whisj)er  which 
was  lieard  only  by  friends.  Perth's  Avords  were  adopteil 
witii  inconsiderable  modifications  ;  and  the  royal  com- 
mands Avere  obeyed  ;  but  a  sullen  discontent  spread 
through  that  minority  of  the  Scottish  nation  by  the  aid 
of  which  the  government  had  hitherto  held  the  major- 
ity down.^ 

When  the  historian  of  this  troubled  reio;n   turns  to 
Ireland,  his  task  becomes  pecuHai"U-  difhciilt 

111'  Tr-  1  !/■  Ireland. 

and  delicate.    His  steps,  —  to  borroAV  the  nne 
image  used  on  a  similai-  occasion  by  a  Roman  poet,  — 
are  on  the  thin  crust  of  ashes,  beneath  Avhich  the  lava 
is  still  gloAving.     The  seventeenth  century  has,  in  that 

1  Fountainhall,  September  16. 1G86. 

a  Fountainhall,  Sept.  16.;  Wodiow,  III.  x.  3. 


410  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

unhappy  country,  left  to  the  nineteenth  a  fatal  heritage 
of  mahgnant  passions.  No  amnesty  for  the  mutual 
wrongs  inflicted  by  the  Saxon  defenders  of  London- 
derry, and  by  the  Celtic  defenders  of  Limerick,  has 
ever  been  granted  from  the  heart  by  either  race.  To 
this  day  a  more  than  Spartan  hauglitiness  alloys  the 
many  noble  qualities  which  characterize  the  children 
of  the  victors,  while  a  Helot  feeling,  compounded  of 
awe  and  hatred,  is  but  too  often  discernible  in  the 
children  of  the  vanquished.  Neither  of  the  hostile 
castes  can  justly  be  absolved  from  blame ;  but  the  chief 
blame  is  due  to  that  shortsighted  and  headstrong  prince 
who,  placed  in  a  situation  in  which  he  might  have 
reconciled  them,  employed  all  his  power  to  inflame 
their  animosity,  and  at  length  forced  them  to  close  in 
a  grapple  for  life  and  death. 

The  grievances  under  which  the  members  of  his 
state  of  the  Church  laboured  in  Ireland  differed  widely 
BubjectoT  from  those  which  he  Avas  attempting  to  re- 
reiigion.  move  in  England  and  Scotland.  The  L'ish 
Statute  Book,  afterwards  polluted  by  intolerance  as  bar- 
barous as  that  of  the  dark  ages,  then  contained  scarce  a 
single  enactment,  and  not  a  single  stringent  enactment, 
imposing  any  penalty  on  Papists  as  such.  On  our  side 
of  Saint  George's  Channel  every  priest  who  received  a 
neophyte  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church  of  Rome  was 
liable  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered.  On  the 
other  side  he  incurred  no  such  danger.  A  Jesuit  who 
landed  at  Dover  took  his  life  in  his  hand  ;  but  he 
walked  the  streets  of  Dublin  in  security.  Here  no  man 
could  hold  office,  or  even  earn  his  livelihood  as  a  bar- 
rister or  a  schoolmaster,  without  previously  taking  the 
oath  of  supremacy  :  but  in  Ireland  a  public  functionary 
was  not  held  to  be  under  the  necessity  of  taking  that 


1686.J  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  411 

oatli  unless  it  were  foi'inally  tendered  to  liim.^  It  there- 
fore did  not  exclude  from  employment  any  person 
whom  the  government  wished  to  promote.  The  sacra- 
mental test  and  the  declaration  against  transubstantia- 
tion  were  unknown  ;  nor  was  either  House  of  Parlia- 
ment closed  by  law  against  any  religious  sect. 

It  might  seem,  therefore,  that  the  Irish  Roman 
Catholic  was  in  a  situation  which  his  English  Hostmtyof 
and  Scottish  brethren  in  the  faith  might  well  '''^*^' 
envy.  In  fact,  however,  his  condition  was  more  pitiable 
and  irritating  than  theirs.  For,  though  not  persecuted 
as  a  Roman  Catholic,  he  was  oppressed  as  an  Irishman. 
In  his  country  the  same  line  of  demarcation  which  sepa- 
rated religions  separated  races  ;  and  he  was  of  the  con- 
quered, the  subjugated,  the  degraded  race.  On  the 
same  soil  dwelt  tw^o  populations,  locally  intermixed, 
morally  and  politically  sundered.  The  difference  of 
religion  was  by  no  means  the  only  difference,  or  even 
the  chief  difference,  which  existed  between  them. 
They  sprang  from  different  stocks.  They  spoke  dif- 
ferent languages.  They  had  different  national  char- 
acters as  strongly  opjwsed  as  any  two  national  char- 
acters in  Europe.  They  were  in  widely  different 
stages  of  civilisation.  Between  two  such  popula- 
tions there  could  be  little  sympathy  ;  and  centuries 
of  calamities  and  wrongs  had  generated  a  strong  antip- 
athv.  The  relation  in  which  the  minority  stood  to 
the  majority  resembled  the  relation  in  which  the  fol- 

1  Tlie  provisions  of  the  Irish  Act  of  Siiprcniac}',  2  Eliz.  cliap.  1.,  arc  sub- 
Btantiall}'  the  same  with  those  of  the  English  Act  of  Supremacy,!  Kliz. 
chap.  1.:  but  the  Enj;lish  act  was  soon  found  to  l)e  defective;  and  the 
defect  was  supplied  by  a  niori'  stringent  act,  5  Eliz.  chap.  1.  No  such  sup- 
plementary law  was  made  in  Irt'.laiid.  That  tin-  construction  nu'ntioned  in 
the  text  was  put  on  the  Irish  Act  o*"  Supremacy,  we  are  told  by  Archbishop 
Kinp:  State  of  Ireland,  chMp.  ii.  sec.  9.  lie  calls  this  construction  Jesuit- 
ical;  but  I  cannot  see  it  in  that  light. 


412  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

lowers  of  William  the  Conqueror  stood  to  the  Saxon 
churls,  or  the  relation  in  which  the  followers  of  Cortes 
stood  to  the  Indians  of  Mexico. 

The  appellation  of  Irish  was  then  given  exclusively 
to  the  Celts  and  to  those  families  which,  though  not  of 
Celtic  origin,  had  in  the  course  of  ages  degenerated 
into  Celtic  manners.  These  people,  probably  about 
a  million  in  number,  had,  with  few  exceptions,  ad- 
hered to  the  Church  of  Rome.  Among  them  resided 
about  two  hundred  thousand  colonists,  proud  of  their 
Saxon  blood  and  of  their  Protestant  faith.^ 

The  great  preponderance  of  numbers  on  one  side  was 
Aboriginal  Hiorc  than  Compensated  by  a  great  superi- 
peasantry.  qy[{,j  yf  intelh'geuce,  vigour,  and  organization 
on  the  other.  The  English  settlers  seem  to  have  been, 
in  knowledge,  energy,  and  perseverance,  rather  above 
than  below  the  average  level  of  the  population  of  the 
mother  country.  The  aboriginal  peasantry,  on  the 
contraiy,  were  in  an  almost  savage  state.  They  never 
worked  till  they  felt  the  sting  of  hunger.  They  were 
content  with  accommodation  inferior  to  that  which,  in 
happier  countries,  was  provided  for  domestic  cattle.  Al- 
ready the  potato,  a  root  which  can  be  cultivated  with 
scarcely  any  art,  industry,  or  capital,  and  which  cannot 
be  long  stored,  had  become  the  food  of  the  common 
people.^  From  a  people  so  fed  diligence  and  fore- 
thought were  not  to  be  expected.  Even  within  a 
few  miles  of  Dublin,  the  traveller,  on  a  soil  the  rich- 
est and  most  verdant  in  the  world,  saw  with  dis- 
gust the  miserable  burrows  out  of  which  sqvialid  and 

1  Political  Anatomy  of  Ireland. 

2  Political  Anatomy  of  Iieland,  1672;  Irish  Hudibras,  1689;  John  Bun- 
ion's Account  of  Ireland,  1099. 


I 


168G.]  JAMES    THE   SECOND.  413 

half   naked   barbarians    stared    wildly    at   him    as    he 
passed.^ 

The  aboriginal  aristocracy  retained  in  no  common 
measure  the  pride  of  birth,  but  had  lost  the  Abonrfnai 
influence  which  is  derived  from  wealth  and  aristocracy. 
power.  Their  lands  had  been  divided  by  Cromwell 
among  his  followers.  A  portion,  indeed,  of  the  vast 
territory  which  he  had  confiscated  had,  after  the  resto- 
ration of  the  House  of  Stuart,  been  given  back  to  the 
ancient  proprietors.  But  much  the  greater  part  was 
still  held  by  English  emigrants  under  the  guarantee  of 
an  Act  of  Parliament.  This  act  had  been  in  force  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ;  and  under  it  mortgages,  settle- 
ments, sales,  and  leases  without  number  had  been  made. 
The  old  Irish  gentry  were  scattered  over  the  whole 
world.  Descendants  of  Milesian  chieftains  swai'med 
in  all  the  courts  and  camps  of  the  Continent.  Those 
despoiled  proprietors  who  still  remained  in  their  native 
land,  brooded  gloomily  over  their  losses,  pined  for  the 
opulence  and  dignity  of  which  they  had  been  deprived, 
and  cherished  wild  hopes  of  another  revolution.  A 
person  of  this  class  was  described  by  his  countrymen 
as  a  gentleman  who  would  be  rich  if  justice  were  done, 
as  a  gentleman  who  had  a  fine  estate  if  he  could  only 
get  it.'^-  He  seldom  betook  himself  to  any  peaceful  call- 
ing. Trade,  indeed,  he  thought  a  far  more  disgraceful 
resource  than  marauding.  Sometimes  he  turned  free- 
booter. Sometimes  he  contrived,  in  defiance  of  the 
law,  to  live  by  coshering,  that  is  to  say,  by  quartering 
himself  on  the  old  tenants  of  his  family,  who,  wretched 
as  was  their  own  condition,  could  not  refuse  a  jiortion 
of  their  pittance  to  one  Avliom  they  still  regarded  as  tlieil 

1  Clarondoii  to  Roclicster,  May  4.  168f>. 

a  Bishop  Malonj-'s  Letter  to  Bishop  Tyrrel,  March  8.  1689. 


414  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND,  [Ch.  VL 

rightful  lord.^  The  native  gentleman  who  had  been 
so  fortunate  as  to  keep  or  to  regain  some  of  his  land  too 
often  lived  like  the  petty  prince  of  a  savage  tribe,  and 
indemnified  himself  for  the  humiliations  which  the  dom- 
inant race  made  him  suffer  by  governing  his  vassals 
despotically,  by  keeping  a  rude  haram,  and  by  mad- 
dening or  stupefying  himself  daily  with  strong  drink.^ 
t'olitically  he  was  insignificant.  No  statute,  indeed, 
excluded  him  ft-om  the  House  of  Commons  :  but  he 
.tad  almost  as  little  chance  of  obtaining  a  seat  there  as 
u  man  of  colour  has  of  being  chosen  a  Senator  of  the 
\jnited  States.  In  fact  only  one  Papist  had  been  re- 
turned to  the  Irish  Parliament  since  the  Restoration: 
Tiie  whole  legislative  and  executive  power  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  colonists  ;  and  the  ascendency  of  the  rul- 
ing caste  was  upheld  by  a  standing  army  of  seven  thou- 
sand men,  on  whose  zeal  for  what  was  called  the  Eng- 
lish mterest  full  reliance  could  be  placed.^ 

On  a  close  scrutiny  it  would  have  been  found  that 
neither  the  Irishry  nor  the  Englishry  formed  a  perfectly 
homogeneous  body.  The  distinction  between  those 
Irish  who  were  of  Celtic  blood,  and  those  Irish  who 
sprang  from  the  followers  of  Strongbow  and  De  Burgh, 
was  not  altogether  effaced.  The  Fitzes  sometimes  per- 
mitted themselves  to  speak  with  scorn  of  the  Os  and 
Macs  ;  and  the  Os  and  Macs  sometimes  repaid  that 
scorn  with  aversion.  In  the  preceding  generation  one 
of  the  most  powerful  of  the  O'Neills  refused  to  pay  any 

1  Statute  10  &  11  Charles  I.  chap.  16. ;  King's  State  of  the  Protestants 
of  Ireland,  chap.  ii.  sec.  8. 

2  King,  chap.  ii.  sec.  8.  Miss  Edgeworth's  King  Corny  belongs  to  a  later 
and  much  more  civilised  generation ;  but  whoever  has  studied  that  admi- 
rable portrait  can  form  some  notion  of  what  King  Corny's  great  grandfather 
must  have  been. 

*  King,  chap.  iii.  sec.  2. 


J 


16W-]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  415 

mark  of  respect  to  a  Roman  Catliolic  gentleman  of 
old  Norman  descent.  "  Tliey  say  that  the  family  has 
been  here  four  hundred  years.  No  matter.  I  hate  the 
clown  as  if  he  had  come  yesterday."^  It  seems,  how- 
ever, that  such  feelings  were  rare,  and  that  the  feud 
which  had  long  raged  between  the  aboi-iginal  Celts  and 
the  degenerate  English  had  nearly  given  place  to  the 
fiercer  feud  which  separated  both  races  from  the  mod- 
ern and  Protestant  colony. 

The  colony  had  its  own  internal  disputes,  both  na- 
tional and  rehgious.  The  majority  was  Eng-  state  of  the 
lish  ;  but  a  large  minority  came  from  the  coiSny. 
south  of  Scotland.  One  half  of  the  settlers  belonged  to 
the  Established  Church  ;  the  other  half  were  Dissenters. 
But  in  Ireland  Scot  and  Southron  were  strongly  bound 
together  by  their  common  Saxon  origin.  Churchman 
and  Presbyterian  were  strongly  bound  together  by  their 
common  Protestantism.  All  the  colonists  had  a  com- 
mon language  and  a  common  pecuniar}^  interest.  They 
were  surrounded  by  common  enemies,  and  could  be  safe 
only  by  means  of  common  precautions  and  exertions. 
The  few  penal  laws,  tiierefore,  which  had  been  made  in 
Ireland  against  Protestant  Noncontbrmists,  were  a  dead 
Ietter.2  The  bigotry  of  the  most  sturdy  churchman 
would  not  bear  exportation  across  St.  George's  Chan- 
nel. As  soon  as  the  Cavalier  arrived  in  Ireland,  and 
found  that,  without  the  hearty  and  courageous  assist- 
ance of  his  Puritan  neighbours,  he  and  all  his  family 
would  run  imminent  risk  of  being  murdered  by  Popish 
marauders,  his  hatred  of  Puritanism,  in  spite  of  himself, 

1  Sheridan  MS.;  Preface  to  tlic  first  volume  of  the  Hibernia  Anglic*na, 
1G90;  Secret  Consults  of  the  Koinish  Tarty  in  Ireljind,  1089. 

2  "  There  was  a  free  lihorty  of  coiiseicnie  by  connivance,  though  not  by 
Ihe  law."—  King,  chap.  iii.  sci-.  1. 

VOL,,  n.  27 


416  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

began  to  languisli  and  die  away.  It  was  remarked  by 
eminent  men  of  both  parties  that  a  Protestant  who,  in 
Ireland,  was  called  a  high  Tory  would  in  England  have 
been  considered  as  a  moderate  Whig.^ 

The  Protestant  Nonconformists,  on  their  side,  en- 
dured, with  more  patience  than  could  have  been  ex- 
pected, the  sight  of  the  most  absurd  ecclesiastical 
establishment  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Four 
Archbishops  and  eighteen  Bishops  were  employed  in 
looking  after  about  a  fifth  part  of  the  number  of  church- 
men who  inhabited  the  single  diocese  of  London.  Of 
the  parochial  clergy  a  lai'ge  proportion  were  pluralists 
and  resided  at  a  distance  from  their  cures.  There  were 
some  who  drew  from  their  benefices  incomes  of  little 
less  than  a  thousand  pounds  a  year,  without  ever  per- 
forming any  spiritual  function.  Yet  this  monstrous  in- 
stitution was  much  less  disliked  by  the  Puritans  settled 
in  Ireland  than  the  Church  of  England  by  the  English 
sectaries.  For  in  Ii'eland  relimous  divisions  were  sub- 
ordinate  to  national  divisions  ;  and  the  Presbyterian, 
while,  as  a  theologian,  he  could  not  but  condemn  the 
established  hierai'chy,  yet  looked  on  that  hierarchy 
with  a  sort  of  complacency  when  he  considered  it  as 
a  sumptuous  and  ostentatious  trophy  of  the  victory 
achieved  by  the  great  race  from  which  he  sprang. ^ 

'  1.  In  a  letter  to  James  found  among  Bishop  Tyrrel's  papers,  and  dated 
Aug.  14.  1686,  are  some  remarkable  expressions.  "  There  are  few  or  none 
Protestants  in  that  country  but  such  as  are  joined  with  the  "Whigs  against 
the  common  enem\'."  And  again:  "  Those  that  passed  for  Tories  here" 
(that  is  in  England)  "  publicly  espouse  the  Whig  quarrel  on  the  other  side 
the  water."  Swift  said  the  same  thing  to  King  William  a  few  years  later: 
"  1  remember  when  I  was  last  in  England  I  told  the  King  that  the  highest 
Tories  we  had  with  us  would  make  tolerable  Whigs  there."  —  Letter  con- 
cerning the  Sacramental  Test. 

'^  The  wealth  and  negligence  of  the  established  clergy  of  Ireland  are 
mentioned  in  the  strongest  terms  by  the  Lord  Lieutenant  Clarendon,  a  most 
unexceptionable  witness. 


1686.]  JAMES    THE   SECOND.  417 

Thus  the  grievances  of  the  Irish  Roman  CathoHc  had 
liardly  anything  in  common  with  the  grievances  of  the 
Encrhsh  Roman  Cathohc.  The  Roman  Cathohc  of  Lan* 
casliire  or  Staftbrdsliire  had  only  to  turn  Protestant ; 
and  he  was  at  once,  in  all  respects,  on  a  level  with  his 
neighbours :  but,  if  the  Roman  Catholics  of  Munster 
and  Connaught  had  turned  Protestants,  they  would 
still  have  continued  to  be  a  subject  people.  Whatever 
evils  the  Roman  Catholic  suffered  in  England  were  the 
effects  of  harsh  legislation,  and  might  have  been  reme- 
died by  a  more  liberal  legislation.  But  between  the 
two  populations  which  inhabited  Ireland  there  was  an 
inequality  which  legislation  had  not  caused  and  could 
not  remove.  ■  The  dominion  which  one  of  those  popu- 
lations exercised  over  the  other  was  the  dominion  of 
wealth  over  poverty,  of  knowledge  over  ignorance,  of 
civilised  over  uncivilised  man. 

James  himself  seemed,  at  the  commencement  of  his 
reign,  to  be  perfectly  aware  of  these  truths.   Course 

mi  1-  •  r-  t'     1         11  -1  whichJaraef 

i  lie  distractions  oi  Ireland,  he  said,  arose,  not  ou^iht  to 
from  the  differences  between  the  Catholics  lowed. 
and  the  Protestants,  but  from  the  differences  between 
the  Irish  and  the  English.^  The  consequences  which 
he  should  have  drawn  from  this  just  proposition  were 
sufficiently  obvious  ;  but  unhappily  for  himself  and  for 
Ireland  he  failed  to  perceive  them. 

If  only  national  animosity  could  be  allayed,  there 
could  be  little  doubt  that  religious  animosity,  not  being 
kept  alive,  as  in  England,  by  cruel  penal  acts  and  strin- 
gent test  acts,  would  of  itself  fade  away.  To  allay  a 
national  animusity  such  as  that  which  the  two  races  in- 
habiting: Ireland  felt  for  each  other  could  not  be  the 


o 


1  Clarendon  reminds  tlift  King  of  this  in  a  letter  dnti'd  March  14.  1684. 
"It  certainly  is,"  Clarendon  adds,  "  a  most  true  notion." 


418  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

work  of  a  few  years.  Yet  it  was  a  work  to  wliicli  a 
wise  and  good  prince  might  have  contributed  much  ; 
and  James  would  have  undertaken  that  work  with  ad- 
vantages such  as  none  of  his  predecessors  or  succes- 
sors possessed.  At  once  an  Englishman  and  a  Roman 
Catholic,  he  belonged  half  to  the  ruling  and  half  to  the 
subject  caste,  and  was  therefore  peculiarly  qualified  to 
be  a  mediator  between  them.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to 
trace  the  course  which  he  ought  to  have  pursued.  He 
ought  to  have  determined  that  the  existing  settlement 
of  landed  property  should  be  inviolable ;  and  he  ought 
to  have  announced  that  determination  in  such  a  manner 
as  effectually  to  quiet  the  anxiety  of  the  neAV  proprie- 
tors, and  to  extinguish  any  wild  hopes  which  the  old 
proprietors  might  entertain.  Whether,  in  the  great 
transfer  of  estates,  injustice  had  or  had  not  been  com- 
mitted, was  immaterial.  That  transfer,  just  or  unjust, 
had  taken  place  so  long  ago,  that  to  reverse  it  would  be 
to  unfix  the  foundations  of  society.  There  must  be  a 
time  of  limitation  to  all  rights.  After  thirty-five  years 
of  actual  possession,  after  twenty-five  years  of  posses- 
sion solemnly  guaranteed  by  statute,  after  innumerable 
leases  and  releases,  mortgages  and  devises,  it  was  too 
late  to  search  for  flaws  in  titles.  Nevertheless  some- 
thing might  have  been  done  to  heal  the  lacerated  feel- 
ings and  to  raise  the  fallen  fortunes  of  the  Irish  gentry. 
The  colonists  were  in  a  thriving  condition.  They  had 
greatly  improved  their  property  by  building,  planting, 
and  enclosing.  The  rents  had  almost  doubled  within  a 
few  years ;  trade  was  brisk  ;  and  the  revenue,  amount- 
ing to  about  three  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year, 
more  than  defrayed  all  the  charges  of  the  local  govern- 
ment, and  afforded  a  surplus  which  was  remitted  to 
England.     There  was  no  doubt  that  the  next  Parlia- 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  419 

ment  which  should  meet  at  Du])lin,  though  represent- 
ing almost  exclusively  the  English  interest,  would,  in 
return  for  the  King's  promise  to  maintain  that  interest 
in  all  its  legal  rights,  willingly  grant  to  him  a  very  con- 
siderable sum  for  the  purpose  of  indemnifying,  at  least 
in  part,  such  native  families  as  had  been  wrongfully  de- 
spoiled. It  was  thus  that  in  our  own  time  the  French 
government  put  an  end  to  the  disputes  engendered  by 
the  most  extensive  confiscation  that  ever  took  place  in 
Europe.  And  thus,  if  James  had  been  guided  by  the 
advice  of  his  most  loyal  Protestant  counsellors,  he  would 
have  at  least  greatly  mitigated  one  of  the  chief  evils 
which  afflicted  Ireland.^ 

Having  done  this,  he  should  have  laboured  to  recon- 
cile the  hostile  races  to  each  other  bv  impartiallv  de- 
fending  the  nVhts  and  restrainino;  the  excesses  of  both. 
He  should  have  punished  with  equal  severity  the  native 
who  indulged  in  the  license  of  barbarism,  and  the 
colonist  who  abused  the  strength  of  civilisation.  As 
far  as  the  legitimate  authority  of  the  crown  extended,  — • 
and  in  Ireland  it  extended  far,  —  no  man  who  was 
qualified  for  office  by  integrity  and  ability  should  have 
been  considered  as  disqualified  by  extraction  or  by 
creed  for  any  public  trust.  It  is  probable  that  a  Roman 
Catholic  King,  with  an  ample  revenue  absolutely  at  his 
disposal,  would,  without  much  difficulty,  have  secured 
the  cooperation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  prelates  and 
priests  in  the  great  work  of  reconciliation.  Much,  how- 
ever, must  still  have  been  left  to  the  healing  influence 
of  time.  The  native  race  woidd  still  have  had  to  learn 
from  the  colonists  industry  and  forethought,  the  arts  of 

1  Clarendon  stronplj'  recommended  this  course,  and  was  of  opinion  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  would  do  its  part,  ^ee  his  letter  to  Ormond,  Aug.  28. 
1686. 


420  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.VI. 

life,  and  the  language  of  England.  Thei*e  could  not 
be  equality  between  men  wlio  lived  in  houses  and  men 
who  lived  in  sties,  between  men  who  were  fed  on  bread 
and  men  who  were  fed  on  potatoes,  between  men  who 
spoke  the  noble  tongue  of  great  philosophers  and  poets 
and  men  who,  with  a  perverted  pride,  boasted  that 
they  could  not  writhe  their  mouths  into  chattering  such 
a  jargon  as  that  in  which  the  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing and  the  Paradise  Lost  were  written.^  Yet  it  is 
not  unreasonable  to  believe  that,  if  the  gentle  policy 
which  has  been  described  had  been  steadily  followed 
by  the  government,  all  distinctions  would  gradually 
have  been  effaced,  and  that  there  would  now  have 
been  no  more  trace  of  the  hostihty  which  has  been  the 
curse  of  Ireland  than  there  is  of  the  equally  deadly 
hostility  which  once  raged  between  the  Saxons  and  the 
Normans  in  England. 

Unhappily  James,  instead  of  becoming  a  mediator 
became  the  fiercest  and  most  reckless  of  parti- 

His  errors.  _  i        />       1 1       •  i  •  •  f 

sans.  Instead  or  allaying  the  annnosity  ot 
the  two  populations,  he  inflamed  it  to  a  height  before 
unknown.  He  determined  to  reverse  their  relative 
position,  and  to  put  the  Protestant  colonists  under  the 
feet  of  the  Popish  Celts.-  To  be  of  the  established 
religion,  to  be  of  the  English  blood,  was,  in  his  view, 
a  disqualification  for  civil  and  military  employment. 
He  meditated  the  design  of  again  confiscating  and  again 
portioning  out  the  soil  of  half  the  island,  and  showed 
his  inclination  so  clearly  that  one  class  was  soon  agi- 
tated by  terrors  which  he  afterwards  vainly  wished  to 
sooth,  and  the  other  by  hopes  which  he  afterwards  vainly 

1  It  was  an  O'Neill  of  great  eminence  who  said  that  it  did  not  becoine 
bim  to  writhe  his  mouth  to  chatter  English.  Preface  to  the  first  volume  oi 
the  Hibernia  Anglicana. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  421 

wished  to  restrain.  But  this  was  the  smallest  part  of 
his  guilt  and  madness.  He  deliberately  resolved,  not 
merely  to  give  to  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Ireland 
the  entire  dominion  of  their  own  country,  but  also  to 
use  them  as  his  instruments  for  setting  up  arbitrary  gov- 
ei'nment  in  Enoland.  The  event  was  such  as  mi^ht  have 
been  foreseen.  The  colonists  turned  to  bay  with  the 
stubborn  hardihood  of  their  race.  The  motlier  country 
justly  regarded  their  cause  as  her  own.  Then  came 
a  desperate  struggle  for  a  tremendous  stake.  Every-- 
thing  dear  to  nations  was  wagered  on  both  sides  :  nor 
can  we  justly  bhune  either  the  Irishman  or  the  Eng- 
lishman fur  obeying,  in  that  extremity,  the  law  of  self- 
preservation.  The  contest  was  terrible,  but  short.  The 
weaker  went  down.  His  fate  was  cruel ;  and  yet  for 
the  cruelty  with  which  he  was  treated  there  was,  not 
indeed  a  defence,  but  an  excuse  :  for,  though  he  suf- 
fered all  that  tyranny  could  inflict,  he  suffered  notliing 
that  he  would  not  himself  have  inflicted.  The  effect 
of  the  insane  attempt  to  subjugate  England  by  means 
of  Ireland  was  tliat  the  Irisli  became  hewers  of  wood 
and  drawers  of  water  to  the  Enghsh.  The  old  proprie- 
toi's,  by  their  effort  to  recover  what  tliey  had  lost,  lost 
the  greater  part  of  what  they- had  retained.  The  mo- 
mentary ascendency  of  Popery  produced  such  a  series  of 
barbarous  laws  against  Popery  as  made  the  statute  book 
of  Ireland  a  proverb  of  infamy  throughout  Christen- 
dom. Such  were  the  bitter  fruits  of  the  policy  of  James. 
We  have  seen  that  one  of  his  first  acts,  after  he 
became  King,  was  to  recall  Ormond  from  Ireland. 
Ormond  was  the  he^id  of  the  Euiilish  interest  in  that 
kingdom  :  he  was  firmly  attached  to  the  Protestant 
religion  ;  and  his  power  far  exceeded  that  of  an  ordi- 
nary Lord  Lieutenant,  first,  because  he  was  in   rank 


422  msTORY  OF  England.  [Ch.  vi. 

and  wealth  the  greatest  of  the  colonists,  and,  secondly, 
because  he  was  not  only  the  chief  of  the  civil  adminis- 
tration, but  also  commander  of  the  forces.  The  King 
was  not  at  that  time  disposed  to  commit  the  govern- 
ment wholly  to  Irish  hands.  He  had  indeed  been 
heard  to  say  tliat  a  native  viceroy  would  soon  become 
an  independent  sovereign.^  For  the  present,  therefore, 
he  determined  to  divide  the  power  which  Ormond  had 
possessed,  to  entrust  the  civil  administration  to  an 
English  and  Protestant  Lord  Lieutenant,  and  to  give 
the  command  of  the  army  to  an  Irish  and  Roman 
Catholic  General.  The  Lord  Lieutenant  was  Claren- 
don; the  General  was  Tyrconnel. 

Tyrconnel  sprang,  as  has  already  been  said,  from 
one  of  those  degenerate  families  of  the  Pale  which 
were  populai'ly  classed  with  the  aboriginal  population 
of  Ireland.  He  sometimes,  indeed,  in  his  rants,  talked 
with  Normaii  haughtiness  of  the  Celtic  barbarians :  ^ 
but  all  his  sympathies  were  really  with  the  natives. 
The  Protestant  colonists  he  hated ;  and  they  returned 
his  hati'ed.  Clarendon's  inchnations  were  very  differ- 
ent :  but  he  was,  from  temper,  interest,  and  principle, 
an  obsequious  courtier.  His  spirit  was  mean  ;  his  cir- 
cumstances were  embarrassed  ;  and  his  mind  had  been 
deeply  imbued  with  the  political  doctrines  which  the 
Church  of  England  had  in  that  age  too  assiduously 
taught.  His  abilities,  however,  were  not  contempti- 
ble ;  and,  under  a  good  King,  he  would  probably  have 
been  a  respectable  viceroy. 

1  Sheridan  MS.  among  the  Stuart  Papers.  I  ought  to  acknowledge  the 
courtesy  with  which  Mr.  Glover  assisted  me  in  my  search  for  this  valuable 
manuscript.  James  appears,  from  the  instructions  which  he  drew  up  for 
his  son  in  1692,  to  have  retained  to  the  last  the  notion  that  Ireland  could 
not  without  danger  be  entrusted  to  an  Irish  Lord  Lieutenant 

*  Sheridan  MS. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  423 

About  three  quarters  of  a  year  elapsed  between  the 
recall  of  Ormond  and  the  arrival  of  Claren-  oiarcmion 

arrives  in 

don   at  Dublm.      During  that  interval    the  Ireland  as 

'-'  1  T         1       Lord  Lieu- 

King  w^as  represented  by  a  board  of  Lords   tenant. 

Justices :  but  the  military  administration  was  in  Tyr- 
connel's  hands.  Already  the  designs  of  the  court 
began  gi'adually  to  unfold  themselves.  A  royal  order 
came  from  Whitehall  for  disarming  the  population. 
This  order  Tyrconnel  strictly  executed  as  respected 
the  English.  Though  the  country  was  infested  by  pred- 
atory bands,  a  Protestant  gentleman  could  scarcely 
obtain  permission  to  keep  a  brace  of  pistols.  The 
native  peasantry,  on  the  other  hand,  were  suffered  to 
retain  their  weapons.^  The  joy  of  the  colonists  was 
therefore  great,  when  at  length,  in  December  1685, 
Tyrconnel  went  to  London  and  Clarendon  came  to 
Dublin.  But  it  soon  appeared  that  the  government 
was  really  directed,  not  at  Dublin,  but  in  London. 
Every  mail  that  crossed  St.  George's  Channel  brouiiht 
tidings  of  the  boundless  influence  which  Tyrconnel 
exercised  on  Irish  affairs.  It  was  said  that  he  was 
to  be  a  Marquess,  that  he  was  to  be  a  Duke,  that 
he  was  to  have  the  connnand  of  the  forces,  that 
he  was  to  be  entrusted  with  the  task  of  remodellinor 
the  army  and  the  courts  of  justice.^  Claren-  ^^  ^^^4;. 
don  was  bitterly  mortified  at  finding  himself  fi""'"""- 
a  subordinate  member  of  that  administration  of  which 
he  had  expected  to  be  the  head.  He  complained  that 
whatever  he  did  was  misrepresented  by  his  detractors, 
and  that  the  gravest  resolutions  touciiing  the  country 
which  he  governed  were  adopted  at  Westminster,  made 

*  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  Jan.  19.  1684 ;  Secret  Consults  of  the  Rom 
ish  I'arty  in  Ireland,  1690. 
«  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  Feb.  27.  1G8.|. 


424  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI 

known  to  the  public,  discussed  at  coffee  houses,  com- 
municated in  hundreds  of  private  letters,  some  weeks 
before  one  hint  had  been  given  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant. 
His  own  personal  dignity,  he  said,  mattered  little  :  but 
it  was  no  light  thing  that  the  representative  of  the 
majesty  of  the  throne  should  be  made  an  object  of  con- 
Panic  among  tempt  to  the  people.^  Panic  spread  fast 
the  colonists,  anioug  the  English  when  they  found  that  the 
viceroy,  their  fellow  countryman  and  fellow  Protestant, 
was  unable  to  extend  to  them  the  protection  which  they 
had  expected  from  him.  They  began  to  know  by  bitter 
experience  what  it  is  to  be  a  subject  caste.  They  were 
harassed  by  the  natives  with  accusations  of  treason  and 
sedition.  This  Protestant  had  corresponded  with  Mon- 
mouth :  that  Protestant  had  said  something  disrespect- 
ful of  the  King  four  or  five  years  ago,  when  the  Ex- 
clusion Bill  was  under  discussion  ;  and  the  evidence  of 
the  most  infamous  of  mankind  was  ready  to  substan- 
tiate every  charge.  The  Lord  Lieutenant  expressed  his 
apprehension  that,  if  these'  practices  were  not  stopped, 
there  would  soon  be  at  Dublin  a  reign  of  terror  similar 
to  that  which  he  had  seen  in  London,  when  every  man 
held  his  life  and  honour  at  the  mercy  of  Oates  and 
Bedloe.2 

Clarendon  was  soon  informed,  by  a  concise  despatch 
from  Sundei'land,  that  it  had  been  resolved  to  make 
without  delay  a  complete  change  in  both  the  civil  and 
the  military  government  of  Ireland,  and  to  bring  a 
large  number  of  Roman  Catholics  instantly  into  office. 
His  Majesty,  it  was  most  ungraciously  added,  had  taken 
counsel  on  these  matters  with  persons  more  competent 

1  Clarendon  to  Rochester  and  Sunderland,  March  2. 168i ;  and  to  Roch- 
ester, March  14. 
a  Clarendon  to  Sunderland,  Feb.  26.  1685. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  425 

to  advise  liira  than  liis  inexperienced  Lord  Lieutenant 
could  possibly  be.^ 

Before  this  letter  reached  the  viceroy  the  intelligence 
which  it  contained  had,  through  many  channels,  ar- 
rived in  Ireland.  The  terror  of  the  colonists  was  ex- 
treme. Outnumbered  as  they  were  by  the  native  pop- 
ulation, their  condition  would  be  pitiable  indeed  if  the 
native  poi>ulation  were  to  be  armed  against  them  with 
the  whole  power  of  the  state  :  and  nothing  less  than 
this  was  threatened.  The  English  inhabitants  of  Dub- 
lin  passed  each  other  in  the  streets  Avith  dejected  looks. 
On  the  Exchange  business  was  suspended.  Land- 
owners hastened  to  sell  their  estates  for  whatever  could 
be  got,  and  to  remit  the  purchase  money  to  England. 
Traders  began  to  call  in  their  debts  and  to  make  prep- 
arations for  retiring  from  business.  The  alarm  soon 
affected  the  revenue.^  Clarendon  attempted  to  inspire 
the  dismayed  settlers  with  a  confidence  which  he  was 
himself  fiir  from  feeling.  He  assured  them  that  their 
proj)erty  -would  he  held  sacred,  and  that,  to  his  certain 
knowledge,  the  King  was  fully  determined  to  maintain 
the  Act  of  Settlement  which  iinarantee-d  their  rio-ht  to 
the  soil.  But  liis  letters  to  England  were  in  a  very 
different  strain.  He  ventured  even  to  expostulate  with 
the  King,  and,  without  blaming  His  Majesty's  inten- 
tion of  employing  Roman  Catholics,  expressed  a  strong 
opinion  that  the  Roman  Catholics  who  might  be  em- 
ployed should   be  Englishmen.^ 

The  reply  of  James  was  dr}'  and  cold.  He  declared 
that  he  had  no  intention  of  depriving  tlie  English  colo- 
nists of  their  land,  but  that  he  regarded  a  large  por- 

1  Sunderland  to  Clnrendon,  March  11.  168i. 
3  Clarendon  to  Rochost.T,  'March  14.  1685.. 
3  Clarendon  to  Jnnics,  March  4.  168>. 


426 


HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND. 


[Ch.  VL 


tion  of  them  as  liis  enemies,  and  that,  since  he  con- 
sented to  leave  so  much  property  in  the  hands  of  his 
enemies,  it  was  the  more  necessary  that  the  civil  and 
military  administration  should  be  in  the  hands  of  his 
friends.^ 

Accordingly  several  Roman  Catholics  were  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council ;  and  orders  were  sent  to  corpora- 
tions to  admit  Roman  Catholics  to  municipal  advan- 
tages.^ Many  officers  of  the  army  were  arbitrarily 
deprived  of  their  commissions  and  of  their  bread.  It 
was  to  no  purpose  that  the  Lord  Lieutenant  pleaded 
the  cause  of  some  whom  he  knew  to  be  good  soldiers 
and  loyal  subjects.  Among  them  were  old  Cavaliers, 
who  had  fought  bravely  for  monarchy,  and  who  bore 
the  marks  of  honourable  wounds.  Their  places  were 
supplied  by  men  who  had  no  recommendation  but  their 
rehgion.  Of  the  new  Captains  and  Lieutenants,  it 
was  said,  some  had  been  cowherds,  some  footmen, 
some  noted  marauders ;  some  had  been  so  used  to 
wear  brogues  that  they  stumbled  and  shuffled  about 
strangely  in  their  military  jack  boots.  Not  a  few  of 
the  officers  who  were  discarded  took  refuse  in  the 
Dutch  service,  and  enjoyed,  four  years  later,  the  pleas- 
ure of  driving  their  successors  before  them  in  igno- 
minious rout  from  the  margin  of  the  Boyne.* 

The  distress  and  alarm  of  Clarendon  were  increased 
by  news  which  reached  him  through  private  channels. 
Without  his  approbation,  without  his  knowledge,  prep- 
arations were  making  for  arming  and  drilling  the  whole 


1  James  to  Clarendon,  April  6.  1686. 

2  Sunderland  to  Clarendon,  Maj'  22.  1686;  Clarendon  to  Ormond,  MaJ 
30.;  Clarendon  to  Sunderland,  July  6.  11. 

8  Clarendon  to  Rochester  and  Sunderland,  June  1.  1686;  to  Rochenter, 
June  12.;  King's  State  of  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  chap.  ii.  .sec.  6,  7.; 
Apology  for  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  1689. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  427 

Celtic  population  of  the  country  of  which  he  was  the 
nominal  governor.  Tyrconnel  from  London  directed 
the  design  ;  and  the  prelates  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  were  his  agents.  Every  priest  had  been  in- 
structed to  prepare  an  exact  list  of  all  his  male  parish- 
ioners capable  of  bearing  arms,  and  to  forward  it  to 
his  Bishop.^ 

It  had  already  been  rumoured  that  Tyi-connel  would 
soon  return  to  Dublin  armed  with  extraordinary  and 
independent  ]>owers  ;  and  the  rumour  gathered  strength 
daily.  The  Lord  Lieutenant,  whom  no  insult  could 
drive  to  resign  the  pomp  and  emoluments  of  his  place, 
declared  that  he  should  submit  cheerfully  to  the  royal 
pleasure,  and  approve  himself  in  all  things  a  faithful 
and  obedient  subject.  He  had  never,  he  said,  in  his 
life,  had  any  difference  with  Tyrconnel,  and  he  trusted 
that  no  difference  would  now  arise. ^  Clarendon  ap- 
pears not  to  have  recollected  that  there  had  once  been 
a  plot  to  ruin  the  fame  of  his  innocent  sister,  and  that 
in  that  plot  Tyrconnel  had  borne  a  chief  part.  This 
is  not  exactly  one  of  the  injuries  which  high  spirited 
men  most  readily  jjardon.  But,  in  the  wicked  court* 
where  the  Hydes  had  long  been  pushing  their  fortunes, 
such  injuries  were  easily  forgiven  and  forgotten,  not 
from  magnanimity  or  Christian  charity,  but  from  mera 
baseness  and  want  of  moral  sensibility.  In  ArriTaiof 
June  168G,  Tyrconnel  came.  His  commis-  JiDubmi' 
sion  authorised  him  only  to  command  the  ■"  *^'^°«'"*'- 
troops :  but  he  brought  with  him  royal  instructions 
touching  all  parts  of  the  administration,  and  at  once 
took  the  real  government  of  the  island  into  his  own 
hands.  On  the  day  after  his  arrival  he  exi)licitly  said 
that   commissions    nuist   be    largelv   given   to    Roman 


I  riii-^r.^jon  t(,  Rorheatcr   Mav  15  168« 
^  Ibia   May  11.  1688 


I 


428  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

Catholic  oflicers,  and  that  room  must  be  made  for  them 
by  dismissing  more  Protestants.  He  pushed  on  the 
remodelHng  of  the  army  eagerly  and  indefatigably.  It 
was  indeed  the  only  part  of  the  flinctions  of  a  Com- 
mander in  Chief  which  he  was  competent  to  perform  ; 
for,  though  courageous  in  brawls  and  duels,  he  knew 
nothing  of  military  duty.  At  the  very  first  review 
which  he  held,  it  was  evident  to  all  who  were  near  to 
him  that  he  did  not  know  how  to  draw  up  a  regiment.^ 
His  partial-    To  tum  Englishmen  out  and  to  put  Irishmen 

ityandvio-       .  •        f-  •  .i         i         •        •  i      i 

lence.  m  was,  m  his  View,  the   beginnmg  and  the 

end  of  the  administration  of  war.  He  had  the  inso- 
lence to  cashier  the  Captain  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant's 
own  Body  Guard :  nor  was  Clarendon  aware  of  what 
had  happened  till  he  saw  a  Roman  Catholic,  whose 
face  was  quite  unknown  to  him,  escorting  the  state 
coach.2  The  change  was  not  confined  to  the  officers 
alone.  The  ranks  were  completely  broken  up  and  re- 
composed.  Four  or  five  hundred  soldiers  were  turned 
out  of  a  single  regiment  chiefly  on  the  ground  that 
they  were  below  the  proper  stature.  Yet  the  most 
unpractised  eye  at  once  perceived  that  they  were  taller 
and  better  made  men  than  their  successors,  whose  wild 
and  squalid  appearance  disgusted  the  beholders.^  Or- 
ders were  given  to  the  new  officers  that  no  man  of  the 
Protestant  religion  was  to  be  suffered  to  enlist.  The 
recruiting  parties,  instead  of  beating  their  drums  for 
volunteers  at  fairs  and  markets,  as  had  been  the  old 
pi'actice,  repaired  to  places  to  which  the  Roman  Cath- 
olics were  in  the  habit  of  making  pilgrimages  for  pur- 
poses of  devotion.     In  a  few  weeks  the  General  had 

1  Clarenilon  to  Rochester,  June  8.  1686. 

2  Secret  Consults  of  the  Romish  Party  in  Ireland. 

s  Chireiulon  to  Rochester,  June  26.  and  July  4.  1686;  Apology  for  the 
l'roie>t;iiits  of  Ireland,  1689. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  429 

introduced  more  than  two  thousand  natives  into  the 
ranks  ;  and  the  people  about  him  confidently  affirmed 
that  by  Christmas  day  not  a  man  of  English  race  would 
be  left  in  the  whole  army.^ 

On  all  questions  which  arose  in  the  Privy  Council, 
Tyrconnel  showed  similar  violence  and  partiality.  John 
Keating,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas,  a  man 
distinguished  by  ability,  integrity,  and  loyalty,  repre- 
sented with  great  mildness  that  perfect  equality  was 
all  that  the  General  could  reasonably  ask  for  his  own 
Church.  The  King,  he  said,  evidently  meant  that  no 
man  fit  for  public  trust  should  be  excluded  because  he 
was  a  Ron^an  Catholic,  and  that  no  man  unfit  for 
public  trust  should  be  admitted  because  he  was  a 
Protestant.  Tyrconnel  immediately  began  to  curse 
and  swear.  "  I  do  not  know  what  to  say  to  that ;  I 
would  have  all  Catholics  in."^  The  most  judicious 
Irishmen  of  his  own  religious  persuasion  were  dismayed 
at  his  rashness,  and  ventured  to  remonstrate  with  him  ; 
but  he  drove  them  from  him  with  imprecations.^  His 
brutality  was  such  that  many  thought  him  mad.  Yet 
it  was  less  strange  than  the  shameless  volubility  with 
which  he  uttered  falsehoods.  He  had  lono-  before 
earned  the  nickname  of  Lying  Dick  Talbot ;  and,  at 
Whitehall,  auv  wild  fiction  was  commonly  desio-nated 
as  one  of  Dick  Talbot's  truths.  He  now  daily  proved 
that  he  was  well  entitled  to  this  unenviable  reputation. 
Indeed  in  him  mendacity  was  almost  a  disease.  He 
would,  after  giving  orders  for  the  dismission  of  English 
officers,  take  them  into  his  closet,  assure  them  of  his 
confidence  and  friendship,  and  implore  heaven  to  con- 

1  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  July  4.  22.  1686;    to  Sunderland,  July  6.j 
U»  the  Kinj^,  Au^.  14. 
*  Clarendon  to  liochester,  June  19.  1686. 
«  Ibid.  June  22.  1686. 


430  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

found  him,  sink  him,  blast  him,  if  he  did  not  take  good 
care  of  their  interests.  Sometimes  those  to  whom  he 
had  thus  perjured  himself  learned,  before  the  day 
closed,  that  he  had  cashiered  them.^ 

On  his  arrival,  though  he  swore  savagely  at  the  Act 
of  Settlement,  and  called  the  English  interest  a  foul 
thing,  a  roguish  thing,  and  a  damned  thing,  he  yet 
pretended  to  be  convinced  that  the  distribution  of  prop- 
erty could  not,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  years,  be 
He  is  bent  on  altered.^  But,  when  he  had  been  a  few 
theAJTof"^  weeks  at  Dublin,  his  language  changed.  He 
Settlement,  jjp^^j^  ^q  harauguo  Vehemently  at  the  Coun- 
cil board  on  the  necessity  of  giving  back  the  land  to 
the  old  owners.  He  had  not,  however,  as  yet,  obtained 
his  master's  sanction  to  this  fatal  project.  National  feel- 
ing still  struggled  feebly  against  superstition  in  the  mind 
of  James.  He  was  an  Englishman :  he  was  an  Eng- 
lish  King  ;  and  he  could  not,  without  some  misgivings, 
consent  to  the  destruction  of  the  greatest  colony  that 
England  had  ever  planted.  The  English  Roman  Cath- 
olics with  whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  counsel 
were  almost  unanimous  in  favour  of  the  Act  of  Settle- 
ment. Not  only  the  honest  and  moderate  Powis,  but 
the  dissolute  and  headstrong  Dover,  gave  judicious  and 
patriotic  advice.  Tyrconnel  could  hardly  hope  to  coun- 
teract at  a  distance  the  effect  which  such  advice  must 
He  returns  produco  ou  the  royal  mind.  He  determined 
to  England.  ^.^  plead  the  cause  of  his  caste  in  person  ; 
and  accordingly  he  set  out,  at  the  end  of  August,  for 
England. 

His  presence  and  his  absence  were  equally  dreaded 

1  Sheridan  MS.;  King's  State  of  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  chap.  iii. 
itec.  3.  sec.  8.  There  is  a  most  striking  instance  of  Tyrconnel's  impudent 
mendacity  in  Clarendon's  letter  to  Rochester,  Julj'  22.  1686. 

•  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  June  8.  1686. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  431 

by  the  Lord  Lieutenant.  It  was,  indeed,  painful  to  be 
daily  browbeaten  by  an  enemy  :  but  it  was  not  less 
painful  to  know  that  an  enemy  was  daily  breathing 
calumny  and  evil  counsel  in  the  royal  ear.  Clarendon 
was  overwhelmed  by  manifold  vexations.  He  made  a 
progress  through  the  country,  and  found  that  he  was 
everywhere  treated  by  the  Irish  population  with  con- 
tempt. The  Roman  Catholic  priests  exhorted  their 
conjireCTations  to  withhold  from  him  all  marks  of  hon- 
our.  The  native  gentry,  instead  of  coming  to  pay 
their  respects  to  him,  remained  at  their  houses.  The 
native  peasantry  everywhere  sang  Celtic  ballads  in 
praise  of  Tyrconncl,  who  would,  they  doubted  not,  soon 
rea})pear  to  complete  the  humiliation  of  their  oppressors.^ 
The  viceroy  had  scarcely  returned  to  Dublin,  The  King 
from  his  unsatisfactory  tour,  when  he  received  ^^tu'ciaren- 
letters  which  inforaied  him  that  he  had  in-  ^°°' 
curred  the  King's  serious  displeasure.  His  Majesty  — 
so  these  letters  ran  —  expected  his  servants  not  only 
to  do  what  he  commanded,  but  to  do  it  from  the  heart, 
and  with  a  cheerful  countenance.  The  Lord  Lieuten- 
ant had  not,  indeed,  refused  to  cooperate  in  the  reform 
of  the  army  and  of  the  civil  administration  ;  but  his 
cooperation  had  been  reluctant  and  ])erfunctory :  his 
looks  had  betrayed  his  feelings;  and  everybody  saw 
that  he  disapproved  of  the  policy  which  ho  was  em- 
ployed to  carry  into  effect.^  In  great  anguish  of  mind 
he  wrote  to  defend  himself;  but  he  Avas  sternly  told 
that  his  defence  was  not  satisfactory.  He  then,  in  the 
most  abject  terms,  declared  that  he  would  not  attempt 
to  justify  himself,  that  he  acquiesced  in  the  royal  judg- 

1  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  Sept.  23.  and  Oct.  2.  1686;   Secret  Consnlti 
of  the  Romish  Party  in  Ireland,  1690. 
»  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  Oct.  6.  1686. 
VOL.  II.  28 


4B2  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  \Ca.  VL        ^. 

ment,  be  it  what  it  might,  that  he  prostrated  himself  Hi 
in  the  dust,  that  he  implored  pardon,  that  of  all  peni- 
tents he  was  the  most  sincere,  that  he  should  think  it 
glorious  to  die  in  his  Sovereign's  cause,  but  found  it 
impossible  to  live  under  his  Sovereign's  displeasure. 
Nor  was  this  mere  interested  hypocrisy,  but,  at  least 
in  part,  unaffected  slavishness  and  poverty  of  spirit ; 
for  in  confidential  letters,  not  meant  for  the  royal  eye, 
he  bemoaned  himself  to  his  family  in  the  same  strain.  | 

He  was  miserable  ;  he  was  crushed  ;  the  wrath  of  the 
King  was  insupportable  ;  if  that  wrath   could  not  be  l 

mitigated,  life  would  not  be  worth  having.^  The  poor 
man's  terror  increased  when  he  learned  that  it  had 
been  determined  at  Whitehall  to  recall  him,  and  to 
appoint,  as  his  successor,  his  rival  and  calumniator, 
Tyrconnel.^  Then  for  a  time  the  prospect  seemed  to 
clear ;  the  King  was  in  better  humour  ;  and  during 
a  few  days  Clarendon  flattered  himself  that  his  broth- 
er's intercession  had  prevailed,  and  that  the  crisis  was 
passed.^ 

In  truth  the  crisis  was  only  beginning.  While  Clar- 
Bochester  endou  was  trying  to  lean  on  Rochester,  Roch- 
ti^jtesnitl  ester  was  unable  longer  to  sup]iort  himself, 
cai  cabal.  ^^  jj-^  j^.^land  the  elder  brother,  thouo-h  re- 
taining  the  guard  of  honour,  the  sword  of  state,  and 
the  title  of  Excellency,  had  really  been  superseded 
by  the  Connnander  of  the  Forces,  so  in  England,  the 
younger  brother,  though  holding  the  white  staff,  and 
walking,  by  virtue  of  his  high  office,  before  the  gi'eatest 
hereditary  nobles,  was  fast  sinking  into  a  mere  financial 
clerk.     The  Parliament  was  again  prorogued  to  a  dis- 

1  Clarendon  to  the  King  and  to  Rochester,  Oct.  23.  1686. 
»  Clarendon  to  Rochester,  Oct.  29,  30.  1686. 
«  Ibid.  Nov.  27.  1686. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  433 

tant  day,  in  opposition  to  the  Treasurer's  known  wishes. 
He  was  not  even  told  that  there  was  to  be   another 
prorogation,  but  was  left  to  learn  the  news  from  the 
Gazette.     Tlie  real  direction  of  affairs  had  passed  to  . 
the   cabal  which  dined   with  Sunderland  on   Fridays. 
The  cabinet  met  only  to  hear  the  despatches  from  for- 
eign  courts  read :    nor  did  those    despatches   contain 
anything  which  was    not   known    on    the    Royal  Ex- 
change ;  for  all  the  English  Envoys  had  received  orders 
to  put  into  the  official  letters  only  the  common  talk  of 
antechambei's,  and  to  reserve  important  secrets  for  pri- 
vate communications  which  were  addressed  to  James 
himself,  to  Sunderland,  or  to  Petre.^   Yet  the  victorious 
faction  was  not  content.     The  King  was  assured  by 
those  whom   he   most  trusted  that  the  obstinacy  with 
which  the  nation  opposed  his  designs  was  really  to  be 
imputed  to  Rochester.     How  could  the  people  believe 
that  their  Sovereign  was  unalterably  resolved  to  per- 
severe in  the  course  on  which  he  had  entered,  when 
they  saw  at  his  right  hand,  ostensibly  first  in  power 
and  trust  among  his  counsellors,  a  man  who  notorious- 
ly regarded  that  course  with    strong    disap])robation  ? 
Every  step  which  had  been  taken  with  the  object  of 
humbling;  the  Church  of  Eno-land,  and  of  elevating  the 
Church  of  Rome,  had  been  opposed  by  the  Treasurer. 
True  it  was  that,  when  he  had  found  opposition  vain, 
he  had  gloomily  submitted,  nay,   that    he  had  some- 
times   even    assisted  in  carrying  into  effect    the  very 
plans  against  which  he  had  most  earnestly  contended. 
True  it  was  that,  though  he  disliked  the  Ecclesiastical 
Commission,  he  had  consented  to  be  a  Commissioner. 
True  it  was  that  he  liad,  wliile  declaring  that  he  could 
see   nothing  blamable  in  tlie    conduct  of   the  Bishop 
1  Barillon,  Sept.  il.  1G86;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  99. 


434  HISTORY   OF  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

of  London,  voted  sullenly  and  reluctantly  for  the  sen- 
tence of  suspension.  But  this  was  not  enough.  A 
prince,  engaged  in  an  entei'prise  so  important  and 
arduous  as  that  on  which  James  was  bent,  had  a  right 
to  expect  from  his  first  minister,  not  unwilling  and 
ungracious  acquiescence,  but  zealous  and  strenuous 
cooperation.  While  such  advice  was  daily  given  to 
James  by  those  in  whom  he  reposed  confidence,  he 
received,  by  the  penny  post,  many  anonymous  letters 
filled  with  calumnies  against  the  Lord  Treasurer. 
This  mode  of  attack  had  been  contrived  by  Tyrconnel, 
and  was  in  perfect  harmony  with  every  part  of  his  in- 
famous life.-^ 

The  King  hesitated.  He  seems,  indeed,  to  have 
really  regarded  his  brother  in  law  with  personal  kind- 
ness, the  effect  of  near  affinity,  of  long  and  familiar 
intercourse,  and  of  many  mutual  good  oflSces.  It 
seemed  probable  that,  as  long  as  Rochester  continued 
to  submit  himself,  though  tardily  and  with  mumiurs, 
to  the  royal  pleasure,  he  would  continue  to  be  in  name 
prime  minister.  Sunderland,  therefore,  with  exquisite 
cunning,  suggested  to  his  master  the  propriety  of  ask- 
ing the  only  proof  of  obedience  which  it  was  quite 
certain  that  Rochester  never  would  give.  At  present, 
—  such  was  the  language  of  the  artful  Secretary,  —  it 
was  impossible  to  consult  with  the  first  of  the  King's 
servants  respecting  the  object  nearest  to  the  King's 
heart.  It  was  lamentable  to  think  that  religious  prej- 
udices should,  at  such  a  conjuncture,  deprive  the  gov- 
ernment of  such  valuable  assistance.  Perhaps  those 
prejudices  might  not  prove  insurmountable.  Then  the 
deceiver  whispered  that,  to  his  knowledge,  Rochester 
had  of  late  had  some  misgivings  about  the  points  in  dis- 

»  Sheridan  MS. 


1086.]  JAMES    THE    SECOND.  435 

pute  between  the  Protestants  and  Catholics.^  This 
was  enough.  The  King  eagerly  cauglit  at  Attempts  of 
the  hint.  He  began  to  flatter  himself  that  eZvert'" 
he  might  at  once  escape  from  the  disagree-  ^o'^'^ester. 
able  necessity  of  removing  a  friend,  and  secure  an  able 
coadjutor  for  the  great  work  which  was  in  progress. 
He  was  also  elated  by  the  hope  that  he  might  have 
the  merit  and  the  glory  of  saving  a  fellow  creature 
from  perdition.  He  seems,  indeed,  about  this  time, 
to  have  been  seized  with  an  unusually  violent  fit  of 
zeal  for  his  religion  ;  and  this  is  the  more  remark- 
able, because  he  had  just  relapsed,  after  a  short  in- 
terval of  selfrestraint,  into  debauchery  which  all  Chris- 
tian divines  condemn  as  sinful,  and  which,  in  an  elderly 
man  married  to  an  agreeable  young  wife,  is  regarded 
even  by  people  of  the  world  as  disreputable.  Lady 
Dorchester  had  returned  from  Dublin,  and  was  again 
the  King's  mistress.  Her  return  was  politically  of 
no  importance.  She  had  learned  by  experience  the 
folly  of  attempting  to  save  her  lover  from  the  de- 
struction to  which  he  was  running  headlonji.  She 
therefore  suffered  the  Jesuits  to  guide  his  political  con- 
duct ;  and  they,  in  return,  suffered  her  to  wheedle  him 
out  of  money.  She  was,  however,  only  one  of  several 
abandoned  women  who  at  this  time  shared,  with  his 
beloved  Church,  the  dominion  over  his  mind.^  He 
seems  to  have  determined  to  make  some  amends  for 
neglecting  the  M^'lfare  of  his  own  soul  by  taking  care 
of  the  souls  of  others.  He  set  himself,  therefore,  to 
labour,  with  real  good  will,  but  with  the  good  will  of  a 
coarse,  stern,  and  arbitiary  mind,  for  the  conversion  of 
his  kinsman.    Every  audience  which  the  Treasurer  ob 

^  Clarke's  F.ife  of.Iaines  (lie  Secoml,  ii.  100. 

2  Barillon,  Sept.  ^.  1686 ;  Bonrepaux,  June  4.  1687. 


436  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VI. 

tained  was  spent  in  arguments  about  the  authority  of 
the  Church  and  the  worship  of  images.  Rochester  was 
firmly  resolved  not  to  abjure  his  religion  ;  but  he  had 
no  scruple  about  employing  in  selfdefence  artifices  as 
discreditable  as  those  wliich  had  been  used  against  him. 
He  affected  to  speak  like  a  man  whose  mind  was  not 
made  up,  professed  himself  desirous  to  be  enlightened 
if  he  was  in  error,  borrowed  Popish  books,  and  listened 
with  civility  to  Popish  divines.  He  had  several  inter- 
views with  Leyburn,  the  Vicar  Apostolic,  with  Godden, 
the  chaplain  and  almoner  of  the  Queen  Dowager,  and 
with  Bonaventure  Giffard,  a  theologian  trained  to  po- 
lemics in  the  schools  of  Douay.  It  Avas  agreed  that 
there  should  be  a  formal  disputation  between  these 
doctors  and  some  Protestant  clergymen.  The  King  told 
Rochester  to  choose  any  ministers  of  the  Established 
Church,  with  two  exceptions.  The  proscribed  persons 
were  Tillotson  and  Stillingfleet.  Tillotson,  the  most 
popular  preacher  of  that  age,  and  in  manners  the  most 
inoffensive  of  men,  had  been  much  connected  with  some 
leading  Whiss  ;  and  Stillingfleet,  who  was  renowned  as 
a  consummate  master  of  all  the  weapons  of  controversy, 
had  given  still  deeper  offence  by  publishing  an  answer 
to  the  papers  which  had  been  found  in  the  strong  box 
of  Charles  the  Second.  Rochester  took  the  two  royal 
chaplains  who  happened  to  be  in  waiting.  One  of  them 
was  Simon  Patrick,  whose  commentaries  on  the  Bible 
still  form  a  part  of  theological  libraries  ;  the  other  vras 
Jane,  a  vehement  Tory,  who  had  assisted  in  drawing 
up  that  decree  by  which  the  University  of  Oxford  had 
solemnly  adopted  the  worst  follies  of  Filmer.  The  con- 
ference took  place  at  Whitehall  on  the  thirtieth  of  No- 
vember. Rochester,  who  did  not  wish  it  to  be  known 
that  he  had  even  consented  to  hear  the  arguments  of 


1«86.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  437 

Popish  priests,  stipulated  for  secrecy.  No  auditor  wao 
suffered  to  be  present  except  the  King.  The  subject 
discussed  was  the  real  presence.  The  Roman  CathoHc 
divines  took  on  themselves  the  burden  of  the  proof. 
Patrick  and  Jane  said  little  ;  nor  was  it  necessary  that 
they  should  say  much  ;  for  the  Earl  himself  undertook 
to  defend  the  doctrine  of  his  Church,  and,  as  was  his 
habit,  soon  warmed  with  conflict,  lost  his  temper,  and 
asked  Avith  great  vehemence  whether  it  was  expected 
that  he  should  change  his  I'eligion  on  such  frivolous 
grounds.  Then  he  remembered  how  much  he  was  risk- 
mg,  began  again  to  dissemble,  complimented  the  dispu- 
tants on  their  skill  and  learning,  and  asked  time  to 
consider  what  had  been  said.^ 

Slow  as  James  was,  he  could  not  but  see  that  this 
was  mere  trifling.  He  told  Barillon  that  Rochester's 
language  was  not  that  of  a  man  honestly  desirous  of 
arriving  at  the  truth.  Still  the  King  did  not  like  to 
propose  directly  to  his  brother  in  law  the  simple  choice, 
apostasy  or  dismissal :  but,  three  days  after  tlie  confer- 
ence, Barillon  waited  on  the  Treasurer,  and,  with  much 
circumlocution  and  many  expressions  of  friendly  con- 
cern, broke  the  unpleasant  truth.  "  Do  you  mean," 
said  Rochester,  bewildered  by  the  involved  and  cere- 
monious phrases  in  wliich  the  intimation  was  made, 
"  that,  if  I  do  not  turn  Catholic,  the  consequence  will 
be  that  I  shall  lose  my  place  ?  "  "I  say  nothing  al)()ut 
consequences,"  answered  the  wary  diplomatist.  *■'  I 
only  come  as  a  friend  to  express  a  hope  that  you  will 
take  care  to  keep  your  place."     "  But  surely,"  said 

1  Barillon,  Dec.  J^.  1686;  Burnet,  i.  684.;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Sec- 
ond, ii.  100. ;  Dodd's  Church  History.  I  have  tried  to  frame  a  fair  narra- 
tive out  of  these  roiiflictinp;  materials.  It  seems  clear  to  me,  from  Roehester's 
>»wn  papers,  that  he  was  on  tliis  occasion  bj'  no  means  so  stuhborn  as  he 
has  been  represented  by  Burnet  and  by  the  biographer  of  James. 


488  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Ch.  YL 

Rochester,  "  the  plain  meaning  of  all  this  is  that  I  must 
turn  Catholic  or  go  out."  He  put  many  questions  for 
the  purpose  of  ascertaining  whether  the  communication 
was  made  by  authority,  but  could  extort  only  vague 
and  mysterious  replies.  At  last,  affecting  a  confidence 
which  he  was  far  from  feelinfr,  he  declared  that  Barillon 
must  have  been  imposed  upon  by  idle  or  malicious  re- 
ports. "  I  tell  you,"  he  said,  "  that  the  King  will  not 
dismiss  me,  and  I  will  not  resign.  I  know  him  :  he 
knows  me  ;  and  I  fear  nobody."  The  Frenchman  an- 
swered that  he  was  charmed,  that  he  was  ravished  to 
hear  it,  and  that  his  only  motive  for  interfering  was  a 
sincere  anxiety  for  the  prosperity  and  dignity  of  his  ex- 
cellent friend  the  Treasurer.  And  thus  the  two  states- 
men parted,  each  flattering  himself  that  he  had  duped 
the  otlier.^ 

Meanwhile,  in  spite  of  all  injunctions  of  secrecy,  the 
news  that  the  Lord  Treasurer  had  consented  to  be  in- 
structed in  the  doctrines  of  Popery  had  spread  fast 
through  London.  Patrick  and  Jane  had  been  seen 
going  in  at  that  mysterious  door  which  led  to  Chiffinch's 
apartments.  Some  Roman  Catholics  about  the  court 
had,  indiscreetly  or  artflilly,  told  all,  and  more  than 
all,  that  they  knew.  The  Tory  churchmen  waited 
anxiously  for  fuller  information.  They  were  mortified 
to  think  that  their  leader  should  even  have  pretended 
to  waver  in  his  opinion  ;  but  they  could  not  believe  that 
he  would  stoop  to  be  a  renegade.  The  unfortunate 
minister,  toi'tured  at  once  by  his  fierce  passions  and  his 
low  desires,  annoyed  by  the  censures  of  the  public, 
annoyed  by  the  hints  which  he  had  received  from  Ba- 
rillon, afraid  of  losing  character,  afraid  of  losing  office, 
repaired  to  the  royal  closet.     He  w^as  determinevl  to 

1  From  Rochester's  Minutes,  dated  Dec.  3.  1G86. 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  439 

keep  his  place,  if  it  could  be  kept  by  any  villany  but 
one.  He  would  pretend  to  be  shaken  in  his  religious 
opinions,  and  to  be  half  a  convert :  he  would  promise 
to  give  strenuous  support  to  that  policy  which  he  had 
hitherto  opposed  :  but,  if  he  were  driven  to  extremity, 
he  would  refuse  to  change  his  religion.  He  began, 
therefore,  by  telling  the  King  that  the  business  in  which 
His  Majesty  took  so  much  interest  was  not  sleeping, 
that  Jane  and  GifFard  were  eno-asred  in  consultino;  books 
on  the  points  in  dispute  between  the  Churches,  and 
that,  when  these  researches  were  over,  it  would  be  de- 
sirable to  have  another  conference.  Then  he  com- 
plained bitterly  that  all  the  town  was  apprised  of  what 
ought  to  have  been  carefully  concealed,  and  tliat  some 
persons,  who,  from  their  station,  might  be  sujjposed  to 
be  well  informed,  reported  strange  things  as  to  the  royal 
intentions.  "  It  is  whispered,"  he  said,  "  that,  if  I  do 
not  do  as  your  Majesty  would  have  me,  I  shall  not  be 
suffered  to  continue  in  my  present  station."  The  King 
said,  with  some  general  expressions  of  kindness,  that  it 
was  difficult  to  prevent  people  from  talking,  and  that 
loose  reports  were  not  to  be  regarded.  These  vague 
phrases  were  not  likely  to  quiet  the  perturbed  mind  of 
the  minister.  His  agitation  became  violent,  and  he  be- 
gan to  plead  for  his  place  as  if  he  had  been  pleading  for 
his  life.  "  Your  Majesty  sees  that  I  do  all  in  my  power 
to  obey  you.  Indeed  I  will  do  all  that  I  can  to  obey 
you  in  every  thing.  I  will  serve  you  in  your  own  way. 
Nay,"  he  cried,  in  an  agony  of  baseness,  "  I  will  do 
what  I  can  to  believe  as  you  would  have  me.  But  do 
not  let  me  be  told,  while  I  am  trying  to  bring  my  mind 
to  this,  that,  if  I  find  it  imijossible  to  comply,  I  must 
lose  all.  For  I  must  needs  tell  yom-  Mnjesty  that  there 
are  other  considerations."    "  Oh,  you  must  needs,"  ex- 


440  HISTORY   OP  ENGLAND.  [Cn.  VI. 

claimed  the  King,  with  an  oath.  For  a  single  word  of 
honest  and  manly  sonnd,  escaping  in  the  midst  of  all 
this  abject  supplication,  was  sufficient  to  move  his  anger. 
"  I  hope,  sir,"  said  poor  Rochester,  "  that  I  do  not 
offend  you.  Surely  your  Majesty  could  not  think  well 
of  me  if  I  did  not  say  so."  The  King  recollected  him- 
self, protested  that  he  was  not  offended,  and  advised  the 
Treasurer  to  disregard  idle  rumours,  and  to  confer  again 
with  Jane  and  Giftard.^ 

After  this  conversation,  a  fortnight  elapsed  before  the 
Dismission  decisivo  blow  fell.  That  fortnight  Rochester 
ofBochester.  p^gggj  in  intriguing  and  imploring.  He  at- 
tempted to  interest  in  his  favour  those  Roman  Catholics 
who  had  the  greatest  influence  at  court.  He  could  not, 
he  said,  renounce  his  own  religion  :  but,  with  that  single 
reservation,  he  would  do  all  that  they  could  desire. 
Indeed,  if  he  might  only  keep  his  place,  they  should 
find  that  he  could  be  more  useful  to  them  as  a  Protes- 
tant than  as  one  of  their  own  communion.^  His  wife, 
who  was  on  a  sick  bed,  had  already,  it  was  said,  sohcited 
the  honour  of  a  visit  from  the  much  injured  Queen,  and 
had  attempted  to  work  on  Her  Majesty's  feelings  of 
compassion.^  But  the  Hydes  abased  themselves  in 
vain.  Petre  regarded  them  with  peculiar  malevolence, 
and  was  bent  on  their  ruin.*  On  the  evening  of  the 
seventeenth  of  December  the  Earl  was  called  into  the 
royal  closet.  James  was  unusually  discomposed,  and 
even  shed  tears.  The  occasion,  indeed,  could  not  but 
call  up  some  recollections  which  might  well  soften  even 
a  hard  heart.     He  expressed  his  regret  that  his  duty 

1  From  Rochester's  Minutes,  Dec.  4.  1686. 

2  Barillon,  Dec.  |o.  1686. 
8  Burnet,  i.  684. 

*  Bonrepaux,  -j^^  1687. 


1686.]  JAMES  THE   SECOND.  441 

made  it  impossible  for  him  to  indulge  his  private  par- 
tiahties.  It  was  absolutely  necessaiy,  he  said,  that 
those  who  had  the  chief  direction  of  his  affairs  should 
partake  his  opinions  and  feelings.  He  owned  that  he 
had  very  great  personal  obligations  to  Rochester,  and 
tiiat  no  fault  could  be  found  with  the  way  in  which  the 
financial  business  had  lateh'-  been  done  :  but  the  office 
of  Lord  Treasurer  was  of  such  high  importance  that,  in 
general,  it  ought  not  to  be  entrusted  to  a  single  person, 
and  could  not  safely  be  entrusted  by  a  Roman  Catholic 
King  to  a  person  zealous  for  the  Church  of  England. 
"  Think  better  of  it,  my  Lord,"  he  continued.  "  Read 
again  the  papers  from  my  brother's  box.  I  will  give 
you  a  little  more  time  for  consideration,  if  you  desire 
it."  Rochester  saw  that  all  was  over,  and  that  the 
wisest  course  left  to  him  was  to  make  his  retreat  with 
as  much  money  and  as  much  credit  as  possible.  He 
succeeded  in  both  objects.  He  obtained  a  pension  of 
four  thousand  pounds  a  year  for  two  lives  on  the  post 
office.  He  had  made  great  sums  out  of  the  estates  of 
traitors,  and  carried  with  him  in  particular  Grey's  bond 
for  forty  thousand  pounds,  and  a  grant  of  all  the  estate 
which  the  crown  had  in  Grey's  extensive  property.^ 
No  person  had  ever  quitted  office  on  terms  so  advan- 
tageous. To  the  applause  of  the  sincere  friends  of  the 
Established  Church  Rochester  had,  indeed,  ver^^  slender 
claims.  To  save  his  ])lace  he  had  sate  in  that  tribunal 
which  had  been  illegally  created  for  the  purpose  of  per- 
secuting her.  To  save  his  place  he  had  given  a  dis- 
honest vote  for  degrading  one  of  her  most  eminent 
ministers,  had  affected  to   doubt   her  orthodoxy,  had 

1  Rochester's  Minutes,  Dec.  19.  1G86;  Barillon,  ";^"  IGSf  ;  Burnet,  i. 
685.;  Clarke's  Life  of  James  the  Second,  ii.  102.,  Treasury  Warrant  Book, 
Dec.  29.  1G86. 


442  HISTORY    OF   ENGLAND.  [Cit.  VI 

listened  with  the  outward  show  of  docility  to  teachers 
who  called  her  schisniatical  and  heretical,  and  had 
offered  to  cooperate  strenuously  with  her  deadliest  ene- 
mies in  their  designs  against  her.  The  highest  praise 
to  which  he  was  entitled  was  this,  that  he  had  shrunk 
from  the  exceeding  wickedness  and  baseness  of  publicly 
abjuring,  for  lucre,  the  religion  in  which  he  had  been 
brought  up,  which  he  believed  to  be  true,  and  of  which 
he  had  long  made  an  ostentatious  profession.  Yet  he 
was  extolled  by  the  great  body  of  Churchmen  as  if  he 
had  been  the  bravest  and  purest  of  martyrs.  The  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  the  Marty rologies  of  Eusebius 
and  of  Fox,  wei'e  ransacked  to  find  parallels  for  his 
heroic  piety.  He  was  Daniel  in  the  den  of  lions,  Sha- 
drach  in  the  fiery  furnace,  Peter  in  the  dungeon  of 
Hei'od,  Paul  at  the  bar  of  Nero,  Ignatius  in  the  amphi- 
theatre, Latimer  at  the  stake.  Among  the  many  facts 
which  prove  that  the  standard  of  honour  and  virtue 
among  the  public  men  of  that  age  was  low,  the  admira- 
tion excited  by  Rochester's  constancy  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  decisive. 

In  his  fall  he  drao;o;ed  down  Clarendon.  On  the 
Dismission  scventli  of  January  1687,  the  Gazette  an- 
don.'  nounced  to  the  people  of  London  that  the 

Treasury  was  put  into  commission.  On  the  eighth 
Tyrconnei  arrived  at  Dublin  a  despatch  formally  signi- 
uty.  fying  that  in  a  month  Tyrconnei  would  as- 

sume the  government  of  Ireland.  It  was  not  without 
great  difliculty  that  this  man  had  sui-mounted  the  nu- 
merous impediments  which  stood  in  the  way  of  his 
ambition.  It  was  well  known  that  the  extermination 
of  the  English  colony  in  Ireland  was  the  object  on 
which  his  heart  was  set.  He  had,  therefore,  to  over- 
come some  scruples  in  the  royal   mind.      He  had  to 


1686.]  JAMES   THE   SECOND.  443 

surmount  the  opposition,  not  merely  of  all  tlie  Protes- 
tant members  of  the  government,  not  merely  of  the 
moderate  and  respectable  heads  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
body,  but  even  of  several  members  of  the  Jesuitical 
cabal. ^  Sunderland  shrank  from  the  thought  of  an 
Irish  revolution,  religious,  political,  and  social.  To  the 
Queen  Tyrconnel  was  personally  an  object  of  aversion. 
Powis  was  therefore  suggested  as  the  man  best  quali- 
fied for  the  viceroyalty.  He  was  of  illustrious  birth ; 
he  was  a  sincere  Roman  Catholic  :  and  yet  he  was 
generally  allowed  by  candid  Protestants  to  be  an  hon- 
est man  and  a  good  Englishman.  All  opposition,  how- 
ever, yielded  to  Tyrconnel's  energy  and  cunning.  He 
fawned,  bullied,  and  bribed  indefatigably.  Petre's 
help  was  secured  by  flattery.  Sunderland  was  plied 
ai,  once  with  promises  and  menaces.  An  immense 
price  was  offered  for  his  support,  no  less  than  an  an- 
nuity of  five  thousand  pounds  a  year  fi'om  Ireland,  re- 
deemable by  payment  of  fifty  thousand  pounds  down. 
If  this  proposal  were  rejected,  Tyrconnel  threatened 
to  let  the  King  know  that  the  Lord  President  had,  at 
the  Friday  dinners,  described  His  Majesty  as  a  fool 
who  must  be  governed  either  by  a  woman  or  by  a 
priest.  Sunderland,  pale  and  trembling,  offered  to 
procure  for  Tyrconnel  supreme  military  connnand, 
enormous  aj)])ointments,  anything  but  the  viceroyalty : 
but  all  comj)romise  was  rejected ;  and  it  was  necessary 
to  yield.     Mary  of  Modena  herself  was  not  free  from 

1  Bishop  Maldiiy  in  a  letter  to  Bishop  Tyrrel  says,  "Never  a  Catholic 
or  other  Eii{i;li>ii  will  ever  think  or  make  a  step,  nor  suffer  the  Kinjif  to 
make  a  step  for  your  restauration,  but  leave  you  as  you  were  hitherto,  and 
leave  your  eiR'inics  over  your  heads:  nor  is  there  any  Eiifflislunan,  Catho- 
lic or  other,  of  what  quality  or  degree  soever  alive,  that  will  stick  to  sac- 
rifice all  Ireland  for  to  save  the  least  interest  of  his  own  in  England,  and 
would  as  willingly  see  all  Ireland  over  inhabited  by  English  of  whatsoever 
religion  as  by  the  Irish." 


444  HISTORY   OP   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

suspicion  of  corruption.  There  was  in  London  a  re- 
nowned chain  of  pearls  which  was  valued  at  ten  thou- 
sand pounds.  It  had  belonged  to  Prince  Rupert ;  and 
by  him  it  had  been  left  to  Margaret  Hughes,  a  courte- 
san who,  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  had  exercised  a 
boundless  empire  over  him.  Tyrconnel  loudly  boasted 
that  with  this  chain  he  had  purchased  the  support  of 
the  Queen.  There  were  those,  however,  who  sus- 
pected that  this  story  was  one  of  Dick  Talbot's  truths, 
and  that  it  had  no  more  foundation  than  the  calumnies 
which,  twenty-six  yeai's  before,  he  had  invented  to 
blacken  the  fame  of  Anne  Hyde.  To  the  Roman 
Catholic  courtiers  generally  he  spoke  of  the  uncertain 
tenure  by  which  they  held  offices,  honours,  and  emolu- 
ments. The  King  might  die  tomorrow,  and  might 
leave  them  at  the  mercy  of  a  hostile  government  and 
a  hostile  rabble.  But,  if  the  old  faith  could  be  made 
dominant  in  Ireland,  if  the  Protestant  interest  in  that 
country  could  be  destroyed,  there  would  still  be,  in 
the  worst  event,  an  asylum  at  hand  to  which  they 
might  retreat,  and  where  they  might  either  negotiate 
or  defend  themselves  with  advantage.  A  Popish 
priest  was  hired  with  the  promise  of  the  mitre  of 
Waterford  to  preach  at  Saint  James's  against  the  Act 
of  Settlement ;  and  his  sermon,  though  heard  with 
deep  disgust  by  the  English  part  of  the  auditory,  was 
not  without  its  effect.  The  struggle  which  patriotism 
had  for  a  time  maintained  against  bigotry  in  the  royal 
mind  was  at  an  end.  "  There  is  work  to  be  done  in 
Ireland,"  said  James,  "  which  no  Englishman  will 
do."  1 

All    obstacles    were    at    length    removed  ;    and    in 
February  1687,  Tyrconnel  began    to  rule   his  native 
1  The  best  account  of  these  transactions  is  in  the  Sheridan  MS. 


1687.]  JAMES  THE    SECOND.  445 

country  with  tlie  power  and  appointments  of  Lord 
Lieutenant,  but  with  the  humbler  title  of  Lord  Dep- 
uty. 

His  arrival  spread  dismay  through  the  whole  English 
population.  Clarendon  was  accompanied,  or  Dismay  of 
speedily  followed,  across  St.  George's  Chan-  coJonSts'^'* 
nel,  by  a  large  proportion  of'the  most  respect-  ir«'a.ud. 
able  inhabitants  of  Dublin,  gentlemen,  tradesmen,  and 
artificers.  It  was  said  that  fifteen  hundred  families 
emigrated  in  a  few  days.  The  panic  was  not  unrea- 
sonable. The  work  of  putting  the  colonists  down  un- 
der the  feet  of  the  natives  went  rapidly  on.  In  a  short 
time  almost  every  Privy  Councillor,  Judge,  Sheriff', 
Mayor,  Alderman,  and  Justice  of  the  Peace  was  a  Celt 
and  a  Roman  Catholic.  It  seemed  that  thino-s  would 
soon  be  i-ipe  for  a  general  election,  and  that  a  House 
of  Commons  bent  on  abrogatuig  the  Act  of  Settlement 
Avould  easily  be  assembled.^  Those  who  had  lately 
been  the  lords  of  the  island  now  cried  out,  in  the  bit- 
terness of  their  souls,  that  they  had  become  a  prey  and 
a  laughingstock  to  their  own  serfs  and  menials ;  that 
houses  were  burnt  and  cattle  stolen  with  impunity  ; 
that  the  new  soldiers  roamed  the  country,  pillagino-, 
insulting,  ravishing,  maiming,  tossing  one  Protestant 
in  a  blanket,  tying  up  another  by  the  hair  and  scourg- 
ing him  ;  that  to  appeal  to  the  law  was  vain  ;  that 
Irish  Judges,  Sheriffs,  juries,  and  witnesses  were  all 
in  a  league  to  save  Irish  criminals  ;  and  that,  even 
without  an  Act  of  Parliament,  the  whole  soil  would 
soon  change  hands ;  for  that,  in  every  action  of  eject- 
ment  tried   mider   the    administration    of  Tyrconnel, 

1  Sheridan  1\[S.;  Oldmixon's  Memoirs  of  Ireland;  Kinp's  State  of  the 
Protestants  of  Ireland,  particularly  chapter  iii. ;  Apology  for  the  Piotea- 
Unts  of  Ireland,  1G89. 


446  HISTORY   OF   ENGLAND.  [Ch.  VL 

judgment  had  been  given  for  the  natiA^e  against  the 
Englishman.^ 

While  Clarendon  was  at  Dublin  the  Privy  Seal  had 
been  in  the  hands  of  Commissioners.  His  friends  hoped 
that  it  would,  on  his  return  to  London,  be  again  deliv- 
ered to  him.  But  the  King  and  the  Jesuitical  cabal 
had  determined  that  the  disgrace  of  the  Hydes  should 
be  complete.  Lord  Arundell  of  Wardour,  a  Roman 
Catholic,  received  the  Privy  Seal.  Bellasyse,  a  Roman 
Catholic,  was  made  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury ;  and 
Dover,  another  Roman  Catholic,  had  a  seat  at  the 
board.  The  appointment  of  a  ruined  gambler  to  such 
a  trust  would  alone  have  sufficed  to  disgust  the  public. 
The  dissolute  Etherege,  who  then  resided  at  Ratisbon 
as  English  envoy,  could  not  refrain  from  expressing, 
with  a  sneer,  his  hope  that  his  old  boon  companion, 
Dover,  would  keep  the  King's  money  better  than  his 
own.  In  order  that  the  finances  might  not  be  ruined 
by  incapable  and  inexperienced  Papists,  the  obsequious, 
diligent  and  silent  Godolphin  was  named  a  Commis- 
sioner of  the  Treasury,  but  continued  to  be  Chamber- 
lain to  the  Queen.^ 

The  dismission  of  the  two  brothers  is  a  great  epoch 
Effect  of  the    in  the  reign  of  James.     From   that  time   it 

tall  of  the  '^ 

Hydes.  was  clcar  that   what  he  really  wanted  was 

not  liberty  of  conscience  for  the  members  of  his  own 
church,  but  liberty  to  persecute  the  members  of  other 
churches.  Pretending  to  abhor  tests,  he  had  himself 
imposed  a  test.  He  thought  it  hard,  he  thought  it 
monstrous,  that  able  and  loyal  men  should  be  excluded 
fi'om  the  public  service  solely  for  being  Roman  Cath- 

1  Secret  Consults  of  the  Romish  Party  in  Ireland,  1690. 
a  London  Gazette,  Jan.  G.  and  March  14.  168|;  Evelyn's  Diary,  March 
10.    Etheresre's  letter  to  Dover  is  in  the  British  Museum. 


I 


1687.]  JAMES   THE    SECOND.  447 

oHcs.  Yet  he  had  himself  turned  out  of  office  a  Treas- 
urer, whom  he  admitted  to  be  both  loyal  and  able, 
solely  for  being  a  Protestant.  The  cry  was  that  a 
general  proscription  was  at  hand,  and  that  every  public 
functionary  must  make  up  his  mind  to  lose  his  soul  or 
to  lose  his  place. ^  Who  indeed  could  hope  to  stand 
where  the  Hydes  had  fallen  ?  They  were  the  broth- 
ers in  law  of  the  King,  the  uncles  and  natural  guar- 
dians of  his  children,  his  friends  from  early  youth,  his 
steady  adherents  in  advei'sity  and  peril,  his  obsequious 
servants  since  he  had  been  on  the  throne.  Their  sole 
crime  was  their  religion ;  and  for  this  crime  they  had 
been  discarded.  In  great  perturbation  men  began-  to 
look  round  for  help  ;  and  soon  all  eyes  were  fixed  on 
one  whom  a  rare  concurrence  both  of  personal  quali- 
ties and  of. fortuitous  circumstances  pointed  out  as  the 
deliverer. 

1  "  Pare  che  gVi  animi  sono  inaspriti  della  voce  die  corre  per  il  popolo, 
d'esser  cacciato  il  detto  ministro  per  non  essere  Oattolico,  percio  tirarsi  ai 
esterminio  do'  Protestanti."  —  Adda,  '2fl_ll:  1687. 

Jan.   10. 
▼OL.  II.  S9 


II 


APPENDIX. 


As  this  is  the  first  occasion  on  which  I  cite  the  corre-    Despatche* 
Bpondonce  of  the  Dutch  ministers  at  the  English  court,  I    ^^j^^^^tg^.'!? 
ought  here  to  mention  that  a  series  of  their  despatches,    22,  note, 
from  the  accession  of  James  the  Second  to  his  fliglit, 
forms  one  of  tlie  most  valuable  parts  of  the  Mackintosh  collection. 
The  subsequent  despatches,  down  to  the  settlement  of  the  govern- 
ment in  February,  1689,  I  procured  from  the  Hague.     The  Dutch 
arcliives  have  been  far  too  little  explored.     They  abound  with  in- 
formation interesting    in  the  highest  degree  to  every  Englishman. 
Tliey  are  admirably  arranged  ;  and  they  are  in  the  charge  of  gentle- 
men whose  courtesy,  liberality,  and  zeal  for  the  interests  of  litera- 
ture, cannot  be  too  highly  praised.     I  wish  to  acknowledge,  in  the 
strongest  manner,  my  own  obligations  to  Mr.  De  Jonge  and  to  Mr. 
Van  Zwanne. 

[For  a  different  view  of  the  character  of  the  father  of 
the  Churchills,  and  of  the  youth  of  John  Churchill,  see    T^^  ^p"^a?' 
broker's  article  in  the  Qnarlerli/  Review,  Vol.  84,  pp.  008- 
tilO  ;    The   New  "  Kxamm,"  by  John   Paget,  Esq.,  pp.  7-19;  and 
Blackwood's  Mar/azine  for  August,  1860.] 

It  ha.><  been  confiilently  asserted,  by  persons  who  have    -vvodrow's 
not  taken  the  trouble  to  look  at  the  authority  to  which  I    atithoritj'. 
have  referred,  that  I  have  grossly  calumniated  these  un-    ^"  °°'  "°*®* 
fortunate  men  ;  that  1  do  not  understand  the  Calvinistic  theology  ; 
and  that  it  is  impossible  that  members  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  can 
have  refused  to  pray  for  any  man,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  not  one 
of  the  elect. 

I  can  only  refer  to  the  narrative  which  Wodrow  has  inserted  in 
his  History,  and  which  he  justly  calls  plain  and  natural.  That  nar- 
rative is  signed  by  two  eye-witnesses;  and  Wodrow,  before  he  pnb- 
lislied  it,  submitted  it  to  a  lliinl  eye-witness  who  ])ronounced  it 
strictly  accurate.  From  tli;it  narrative  I  will  extract  the  only  words 
which  bear  on  the  point  in  (juestion  :  "When  all  the  tln-ee  were 
taken,  the  officers  consulted  among  themselves,  and,  withdrawing  to 
the  west  side  of  the  town,  questioned  the  prisoners,  particularly  if 
they  would  pray  for  King  James  VII.    They  answered,  they  would 


450  APPENDIX. 

pray  for  all  within  the  election  of  grace.  Balfour  said,  Do  you 
question  the  King's  election?  Tliey  answered,  sometimes  they 
questioned  their  own.  Upon  which  he  swore  dreadfully,  and  said 
they  should  die  presently,  because  they  would  not  pray  for  Christ's 
vicegerent,  and  so,  without  one  word  more,  commanded  Thomas 
Cook  to  go  to  his  prayers,  for  he  should  die." 

In  this  narrative  Wodrow  saw  nothing  improbable  ;  and  I  shall 
not  easily  be  convinced  that  any  writer  now  living  understands  tlie 
feelings  and  opinions  of  the  Covenanters  better  than  Wodrow  did. 
(1857.) 

Graham,  of  [Mr.  Macaulay  has  adopted  the  traditional  view  of  the 

p'^^ss'^se*"  character  of  Claverhouse,  which  represents  him  as  a 
fiend  incarnate.  His  contemporaries  describe  him  as  an 
accomplished  gentleman  and  gallant  soldier,  —  as  a  man  of  spotless 
honour,  of  eminent  social  virtues,  and  of  an  unselfish  loyalty.  The 
question  has  been  examined  at  length  with  a  full  review  of  the 
authorities,  by  Professor  Aytoua.  See  Lays  of  the  Scottish  Cavaliers, 
in  Notes  and  Appendix.  See  also  The  New  "  Examen,"  by  John 
Paget,  Barrister  at  Law,  Blackwood's  edition,  pp.  194-255,  for  an 
elaborate  defence  of  Claverhouse,  republished  from  Blackwood's 
Muijazine  of  August,  1860. 

In  addition  to  the  version  of  John  Brown's  story,  by  Wodrow, 
and  the  version  by  Walker,  which  differ  from  each  other,  and  both 
of  them  from  the  version  of  Mr.  Macaulay,  Mr.  Paget  copies  tiie 
original  despatch  which  Claverhouse  sent  to  the  Duke  of  Queens- 
bury,  then  head  of  the  government  in  Scotland,  giving  an  account 
of  Brown's  execution,  written  two  days  after  it  occurred.  This 
despatch  was  preserved  among  the  Queensbury  papers,  and  was  first 
published  recently  by  Mr.  Mark  Napier,  in  his  Memoirs  of  Dundee. 
The  evidence  amounts  to  proof  that  John  Brown  was  an  avowed 
and  determined  rebel,  amenable  as  such  to  the  law,  —  that  he  refused 
to  swear  not  to  take  arms  against  the  King,  saying  that  he  knew 
no  King,  —  and  that  he  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  abjuration,  which 
was  equivalent  to  a  plea  of  guilty  on  an  indictment  for  high  treason. 
The  law  was  harsh,  but  the  facts  seem  to  bring  the  death  of  John 
Brown  within  the  ordinary  rules  of  military  executions,  —  and 
perhaps  there  is  no  good  reason  for  believing  that  it  was  attended 
with  any  other  horrors  than  those  which  are  inseparable  from  such 
an  event.] 

Narcissus  •^  copy  of  this  Diary,  from  July,  1685,  to  September, 

Luttreir.s         1690,  is  among  the  Mackintosh  papers.     To  the  rest  I 
222  note  '       ^^^  allowed  access,  by  the  kindness  of  the  warden  of 
All  Souls'  College,  where  the  original  manuscript  is  de- 
posited.    The  Delegates  of  the  Press  of  the  University  of  Oxford, 


APPENDIX.  V)l 

have  since  pnblishecl  tlie  whole,  in  six  substantial  volumes,  wliioh 

will,  I  am  afraid,  find  liltlu  favour  with  roadcrs  who  seek  only  for 

amusement,  but  which  will  always  be  useful  as  materials  for  history. 

(1857.) 

[Mr.  J.  VV.  Croker  considered   that  the  allegation  of   William's 

William's  complicity  with  Monmouth,  which  Mr.  Ma-    complicity 
,.  ,  ,  ■    .  ,  ...  ,        ,        ■n'lth  Mon- 

caulay   did   not    think    worth    retutin<r,    is    completely    mouth.    P. 

established  by  the  authority  of  Dalrymple,  and  the  de-  ^*^''- 
spatches  of  D'Avaux.  See  the  passages  cited  in  the  Quarterly 
Review,  Vol.  84,  pp.  616-6'21.  The  critic  adds,  that  William  suffi- 
ciently testified  his  interest  in  Monmouth's  attempt  by  his  fa- 
vour to  the  survivors  of  it.  At  the  Revolution  he  rewarded  Lord 
Grey  with  an  earldom,  —  and  Ferguson  with  a  sinecure  place  of 
five  hundred  pounds  a  year  in  the  royal  household  ;  and  the  obscure 
printer  of  Monmouth's  Declaration  sought  refuge  with  the  Prince 
of  Orange,  returned  with  him,  and  was  made  stationer  to  their 
Majesties  William  and  Mary.] 

The  letter  of  Sunderland  is  as  follows  :  — 

"  Whitehall,  Feb.  13,  168.5-6. 
"  Mr.  Penne, 

"  Her  Majestj''s  Maids  of  Honour  having  acquainted  v\iiiiam 
me  that  they  designe  to  employ  you  and  Mr.  Walden  in  lh,'.T..,u"iton 
making  a  composition  with  the  Relations  of  the  Maids  of  Maids. 
Taunton  for  the  high  Misdemeanour  they  have  been  '  "'""  '  °°  ' 
guilty  of,  I  do  at  their  request  hereby  let  you  know  that  His  Majesty 
has  been  pleased  to  give  their  Fines  to  the  said  Maids  of  Honour,  and 
therefore  recommend  it  to  Mr.  Walden  and  you  to  make  the  most 
advantageous  composition  you  can  in  their  behalfe. 

"  I  am,  Sir,  your  humble  servant, 

"  Sdnderland." 

That  the  person  to  whom  this  letter  was  addressed  was  William 
Penn,  the  Quaker,  was  not  doubted  by  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  who 
first  brought  it  to  light,  or,  as  far  as  lam  aware,  by  any  other  person, 
till  after  the  publication  of  the  first  part  of  this  History'.  It  has  since 
been  confidently  asserted  that  the  letter  was  addressed  to  a  certain 
George  Penne,  who  appears  from  an  old  account  book  lately  dis- 
covered to  have  been  concerned  in  a  negoti.-ition  for  the  ransom  of 
one  of  Monmouth's  followers,  named  Azariah  Pinney. 

If  I  thought  that  I  had  committed  an  error,  I  siiould,  I  hope,  have 
the  honesty  to  acknowledge  it.  But,  after  full  consideration,  I  am 
•atisfied  that  Sundprland's  letter  was  addressed  to  William  Penn. 

Much  has  been  said  about   the  way  in  whicli  the  name  is  spelt 


452  APPENDIX. 

Tlie  Quaker,  we  are  told,  was  not  Mr.  Penne,  but  Mr.  Penn.  I  feel 
assured  tliat  no  peuson  conversant  with  the  books  and  manuscripts 
of  the  seventeenth  century  will  attach  any  importance  to  this  arj^u- 
ment.  It  is  notorious  that  a  proper  name  was  then  thought  to  be 
well  spelt  if  the  sound  were  preserved.  To  go  no  further  than  the 
persons  who,  in  Penn's  time,  held  the  Great  Seal,  one  of  them  is  some- 
times Hyde  and  sometimes  Hide  :  another  is  JefTeries,  Jeffries,  Jeffe- 
reys,  and  Jeffreys  :  a  third  is  Somers,  Sommers,  and  Summers :  a 
fourth  is  Wright  and  Wrighte ;  and  a  fifth  is  Cowper  and  Cooper. 
The  Quaker's  name  was  spelt  in  three  ways.  He,  and  his  father  the 
Admiral  before  him,  invariably,  as  far  as  I  have  observed,  sfjelt  it 
Penn  :  but  most  people  spelt  it  Pen ;  and  there  were  some  who  ad- 
hered to  the  ancient  form,  Penne.  For  example,  William  the  father 
is  Penne  in  a  letter  from  Disbrowe  to  Thurloe,  dated  on  the  7tli  of 
December  1654  ;  and  William  the  son  is  Penne  in  a  newsletter  of  the 
22d  of  September  1688,  printed  in  the  Ellis  Correspondence.  In 
Richard  Ward's  Life  and  Letters  of  Henry  More,  printed  in  1710,  the 
name  of  the  Quaker  will  be  found  spelt  in  all  the  three  ways,  Penn 
in  the  index.  Pen  in  page  197,  and  Penne  in  page  311.  The  name  is 
Penne  in  the  Commission  which  the  Admiral  carried  out  with  him 
on  his  expedition  to  the  West  Indies.  Burchett,  who  became  Sec- 
retary to  the  Admiralty  soon  after  the  Revolution,  and  remained 
in  office  long  after  the  accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover,  always, 
in  his  Naval  History,  wrote  the  name  Penne.  Surely  it  cannot  be 
thought  strange  that  an  old-fashioned  spelling,  in  which  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Admiralty  persisted  so  late  as  1720,  should  have  been 
used  at  the  office  of  the  Secretary  of  State  in  1686.  I  am  quite 
confident  that,  if  the  letter  which  we  are  considering  had  been  of 
a  different  kind,  if  Mr.  Penne  had  been  informed  that,  in  conse- 
quence of  his  earnest  intercession,  the  King  had  been  graciously 
pleased  to  grant  a  free  pardon  to  the  Taunton  girls,  and  if  I  had 
attempted  to  deprive  the  Quaker  of  the  credit  of  that  intercession 
on  the  ground  that  his  name  was  not  Penne,  the  very  persons  who 
now  complain  so  bitterly  that  I  am  unjust  to  his  memory  would 
have  complained  quite  as  bitterly,  and,  I  must  say,  with  much  more 
reason. 

I  think  myself,  therefore,  perfectly  justified  in  considering  the 
names,  Penn  and  Penne,  as  the  same.  To  which,  then,  of  the  two 
persons  who  bore  that  name,  George  or  William,  is  it  probable  that 
the  letter  of  the  Secretary  of  State  was  addressed  ? 

George  was  evidently  an  adventurer  of  a  very  low  class.  All  that 
we  learn  about  him  from  the  papers  of  the  Pinney  family  is  that  he 
Wits  employed  in  the  purchase  of  a  pardon  for  the  younger  son  of 
a  dissenting  minister.    The  whole  sum  which  appears  to  have  [lassed 


APPENDIX.  453 

though  George's  hands  on  tliis  occasion  was  sixtv-five  pounds.  His 
commission  on  the  transaction  must  tiieretbre  liave  been  small 
The  only  other  information  whicli  we  have  about  liim  is  that  he, 
sometime  later,  applied  to  the  government  for  a  favour  which  wai 
very  far  from  being  an  honour.  In  England  the  Groom  Porter  of 
the  Palace  liad  a  jurisdiction  over  games  of  chance,  and  made  some 
very  dirty  gain  by  issuing  lottery  tickets  and  licensing  hazard  tables. 
CJeorge  appears  to  have  petitioned  for  a  similar  privilege  in  the 
American  colonies. 

William  Penn  was,  during  the  reign  of  James  the  Second,  the 
most  active  and  powerful  solicitor  about  the  Court.  1  will  quote  the 
words  of  his  admirer  Croese.  "  Quum  autem  Pennus  tanta  gratia 
plurimum  apud  regem  valeret,  et  per  id  perplures  sibi  amicos  ac- 
quireret,  ilium  omnes,  etiani  qui  modo  aliqua  notitia  orant  conjuncti, 
quoties  aliquid  a  rege  postulandum  agendumve  apud  regem  essot, 
adire,  ambire,  orare,  ut  eos  apud  regem  adjuvaret."  He  was  over- 
whelmed by  business  of  this  kind,  "  obrutus  negotiationibus  cura- 
tionibusque."  His  house  and  the  approaches  to  it  were  every  day 
blocked  up  by  crowds  of  persons  who  came  to  request  his  good 
offices  ;  "  domus  ac  vestibula  quotidie  referta  clientium  et  supplican- 
tium."  From  the  FountainhiUl  papers  it  appears  that  his  influence 
was  felt  even  in  the  highlands  of  Scotland.  We  learn  from  himself 
that,  at  this  time,  he  was  always  toiling  for  others,  that  he  was  a  daily 
suitor  at  Whitehall,  and  that,  if  he  had  chosen  to  sell  his  influence, 
he  could,  in  little  more  than  three  years,  have  put  twenty  thousand 
pounds  into  his  pocket,  and  obtained  a  hundred  tiiousand  more  for 
the  improvement  of  the  colony  of  which  he  was  proprietor. 

Such  was  the  position  of  these  two  men.  Which  of  them,  then, 
was  tlie  more  likely  to  be  employed  in  the  matter  to  which  Sunder- 
land's letter  related  ?  Was  it  George  or  William,  an  agent  of  the 
lowest  or  of  the  highest  class?  The  persons  interested  were  ladies 
of  rank  and  fashion,  resident  at  the  palace,  where  (iuorge  would 
liardly  have  been  admitted  into  an  outer  room,  but  where  William 
was  every  day  in  the  presence  chamber  and  was  frequently  callvd 
into  the  closet.  The  greatest  nobles  in  the  kingdom  were  zealous 
and  active  in  the  cause  of  their  fair  friends,  nobles  with  whom  Wil- 
liam lived  in  habits  of  familiar  intercourse,  but  who  would  hardly 
have  thought  George  lit  company  for  their  grooms.  The  sum  in 
question  was  seven  thousand  pounds,  a  sum  not  largo  when  com- 
pared with  the  masses  of  wealth  with  whicli  William  had  constantly 
to  deal,  but  more  than  a  hundred  times  as  large  as  the  only  ransom 
which  is  known  to  have  i)assed  through  the  hands  of  Georyc.  These 
considerations  would  siiHiee  to  raise  a  strong  presumption  that  Sun- 
derland's letter  was  addressed  to  William,  and  not  to  (Jeorge  :  but 
there  is  a  still  stronger  argument  behind. 


454  APPENDIX. 

It  is  most  important  to  observe  that  the  person  to  whom  this  let- 
ter was  addressed  was  not  the  first  person  whom  tlie  Maids  of  Hon- 
our had  requested  to  act  for  them.  They  applied  to  liim,  because 
anotlier  person,  to  wliom  the}' had  previously  applied,  liad,  after  some 
correspondence,  declined  the  office.  From  their  first  application  we 
learn  with  certainty  what  sort  of  person  they  wished  to  employ.  If 
their  first  application  had  been  made  to  some  obscure  pettifogger  or 
needy  gambler,  we  should  be  warranted  in  believing  that  the  Penne 
to  whom  their  second  application  was  made  was  George.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  tlieir  first  application  was  made  to  a  gentleman  of  the 
highest  consideration,  we  can  hardly  be  wrong  in  saying  that  the 
Penne  to  whom  their  second  application  was  made  must  have  been 
William.  To  whom,  then,  was  their  first  application  made  ?  It  was 
to  Sir  Francis  Warre  of  Hestercombe,  a  Baronet  and  a  Member  of 
Parliament.  The  letters  are  still  extaTit  in  which  the  Duke  of 
Somerset,  the  proud  Duke,  not  a  man  very  likely  to  have  corre- 
Bponded  with  George  Penne,  pressed  Sir  Francis  to  undertake  the 
commission.  The  latest  of  those  letters  is  dated  about  three  weeks 
before  Sunderland's  letter  to  Mr.  Penne.  Somerset  tells  Sir  Francis 
that  the  town  clerk  of  Bridgewater,  whose  name,  I  may  remark  in 
passing,  is  spelt  sometimes  Bird  and  sometimes  Birde,  had  ottered 
his  services,  but  that  those  services  had  been  declined.  It  is  clear, 
therefore,  that  the  Maids  of  Honour  were  desirous  to  have  an  agent 
of  high  station  and  character.  And  they  were  right.  For  the  sum 
which  they  demanded  was  so-  large  that  no  ordinary  jobber  could 
safely  be  entrusted  with  the  care  of  their  interests. 

As  Sir  Francis  Warre  excused  himself  from  undertaking  the  nego- 
tiation, it  became  necessary  for  the  Maids  of  Honour  and  their  ad- 
visers to  choose  somebody  wlio  might  supply  his  place ;  and  they 
chose  Penne.  Which  of  the  two  Pennes,  then,  must  have  been 
their  choice,  George,  a  petty  broker  to  whom  a  percentage  on  sixty- 
five  pounds  was  an  object,  and  whose  highest  ambition  was  to  derive 
an  infamous  livelihood  from  cards  and  dice,  or  William,  not  inferior 
in  social  position  to  any  commoner  in  the  kingdom  ?  Is  it  possible 
to  believe  that  the  ladies  who,  in  January,  employed  the  Duke  of 
Somerset  to  procure  for  them  an  agent  in  the  first  rank  of  the  Fng- 
lish  gentry,  and  who  did  not  think  an  attorney,  though  occupying 
a  respectable  post  in  a  respectable  corporation,  good  enough  for  their 
purpose,  would,  in  February,  have  resolved  to  trust  everytliing  to  a 
fellow  who  was  as  much  below  Bird  as  Bird  was  below  AYarre  1 

But,  it  is  said,  Sunderland's  letter  is  dry  and  distant;  and  he 
never  would  have  written  in  such  a  style  to  William  Penn  with 
whom  he  was  on  friendly  terms.  Can  it  be  necessary  for  me  to 
reply  that  the  official  communications  which  a  Minister  of  State 


I 


APIENDIX.  455 

makes  to  his  dearest  friends  and  nearest  relations  are  as  cold  and 
formal  as  those  whicli  he  makes  to  strangers  '!  AVill  it  be  contended 
that  the  General  Wellesley,  to  whom  the  Marquis  Wellesley,  wlien 
Governor  of  India,  addressed  so  many  letters  beginning;-  with  "  Sir," 
and  ending  with  "  I  have  tlie  honour  to  be  your  obedient  servant," 
CJinnot  possibly  have  been  his  Lordship's  brother  Arthur  'f 

But,  it  is  said,  Oldmixon  tells  a  different  story.  According  to  him, 
a  Popish  lawyer,  named  Brent,  and  a  subordinate  jobber,  named 
Crane,  were  the  agents  in  the  matter  of  the  Taunton  girls.  Now  it 
is  notorious  that  of  all  our  historians  Oldmixon  is  the  least  trust- 
worthy. His  most  positive  assertion  would  be  of  no  value  when 
opposed  to  such  evidence  as  is  furnished  by  Sunderland's  letter. 
But  Oldmixon  asserts  nothing  positively.  Not  only  does  he  not 
assert  positively  that  Brent  and  Crane  acted  for  the  Maids  of  Hon- 
our :  but  he  does  not  even  assert  positively  that  the  Maids  of  Honour 
were  at  all  concerned.  He  goes  no  further  than  "  It  was  said,"  and 
"  It  was  reported."  It  is  plain  therefore  that  he  was  very  imper- 
fectly informed.  1  do  not  think  it  impossil)le,  liowever,  that  tiiere 
may  have  been  some  foundation  for  the  rumour  winch  he  mentions. 
We  have  seen  that  one  busy  lawyer,  named  Bird,  volunteered  to 
look  alter  the  interest  of  the  Maids  of  Honour,  and  that  they  were 
forced  to  tell  him  that  they  did  not  want  liis  services.  Other  i)ersons, 
and  among  them  the  two  whom  Oldmixon  names,  may  have  tried  to 
thrust  then'iselves  into  so  lucrative  a  job,  and  may,  by  pretending  to 
interest  at  Court,  have  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  little  money  from 
terrified  families.  But  nothing  can  be  more  clear  than  that  the  au- 
thorised agent  of  the  Maids  of  Honour  was  the  Mr.  Penne  to  whom 
the  Secretary  of  State  wrote ;  and  I  firmly  believe  that  Mr.  Penne 
to  have  been  William  the  Quaker. 

If  it  be  said  that  it  is  incredible  that  so  good  a  man  would  have 
been  concerned  in  so  bad  an  affair,  I  can  only  answer  that  this 
afliiir  was  very  far  indeed  from  being  the  worst  in  which  he  was 
concerned. 

For  these  reasons  I  leave  the  text,  and  shall  leave  it,  exactly  as  it 
originally  stood.    (1857.) 

[When  a  public  man  is  arraigned  on  an  odious  charge    wiiii.im 
a  century  and  a  half  after  his  death,  he  can  neither    ^,''"',',■^",'*    . 
plead  to  tlie  indictment  nor  be  heard  in  his  own  de-    Honour, 
fence;  and  being  therefore  tried  ex  parte,  he  sliould  be    P- -58. 
convicted  only  on    the   clearest  and  most  conclusive  proof.     W« 
think,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Macaulay  would  have  best  consulted  his 
character  for  candor  and  trutlifulness,  by  withdrawing  tiis   charge 
against  the  great  Quaker,  as  soon  as  he  ascertained  that  the  letter  of 
Sunderland  was  not  addressed  to  William  Penn,  as  the  transcript 


i5Q  APPENDIX. 

was  erroneously  addressed  in  the  Mackintosh  Collection,  and  as  the 
letter  is  erroneously  cited  in  the  Mackintosh  History  of  tlie  Revo- 
lution. The  moment  this  error  was  established,  there  was  an  end 
of  the  case,  — for  as  long  as  there  was  another  I'en,  Penn,  or  Penne 
in  England,  for  whom  the  letter  might  well  enough  have  been  in- 
tended, the  assumption  tliat  it  was  intended  for  William  Penn,  be- 
comes matter  merely  of  conjecture  and  inference.  Against  censure 
based  on  mere  conjecture  or  inference,  the  fame  of  the  dead  should 
be  secure. 

But  we  do  not  wish  to  evade  this  question  by  a  plea  to  the  juris- 
diction, or  a  demurrer  to  the  evidence.  It  may  safely  be  dealt  with 
upon  the  merits.  After  a  full  examination  of  it,  we  are  bound  to 
say  that  it  is  as  clear  as  anything  which  rests  on  evidence,  or  on  tlie 
want  of  evidence,  that  William  Penn  neither  accepted  the  commis- 
sion of  the  Maids  of  Honour,  as  Mr.  Macaulay  positively  asserts, 
nor  received  their  instructions,  as  Sir  James  Mackintosli  alleges,  with 
regret;  that  he  never  became  their  agent,  and  was  never  requested 
to  serve  in  that  capacity. 

The  only  evidence  extant  relating  to  this  transaction,  is  document- 
ary. When  the  fines  of  the  Taunton  girls  were  given  to  the  maids 
of  honour,  the  Maids  of  Honour  applied  to  the  Duke  of  Somerset, 
the  lord  lieutenant  of  the  county.  The  Duke  addressed  to  Sir 
Francis  Warre,  who  resided  at  Hestercombe,  in  the  immediate 
neighbourhood,  the  following  letter:  — 

"  I  do  here  send  you  a  list  of  the  Taunton  Maydes.  You  living 
soe  near  to  Taunton  makes  me  think  that  you  know  some  of  them, 
therefore  pray  send  me  word  by  the  first  oportunity  whether  any  of 
these  are  in  custody  and  whoe  they  are ;  and  if  any  one  of  these  are 
not  in  custody,  lett  them  be  secured,  especially  the  schoole-mistress, 
and  likewise  send  me  word  if  you  know  any  one  of  these,  because 
there  are  some  friends  of  mine  thatl  believe  upon  easy  ternies  might 
get  theire  pardon  of  the  King.  Pray  send  me  an  answer  by  the 
first  opportunity,  and  in  so  doing  this  you  will  oblige  your  humble 
servant. 

"  LoNnoN,  Dec.  12,  1685.  Somerset." 

The  reply  of  Sir  Francis  is  not  extant,  but  the  tenor  of  it  can  l;e 
inferred  from  the  rejoinder  of  Somerset.  The  reply  was  an  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  Duke's  letter,  declining  nothing,  but  suggesting  tliat 
the  matter  seemed  to  be  already  in  the  hands  of  a  Mr.  Bird.  To 
this  Somerset  replied  that  Bird's  interference  was  unauthorised,  and 
tliat  he  had  been  advised  not  to  trouble  himself  more  with  the  af- 
feir.     This  objection  being  thus  removed,  Somerset  added,  —  "  If 


APPENDIX.  457 

/ou  will  procedo  on  this  matter  according  to  my  former  letter,  you 
will  infinitely  oblige  your  humble  servant."  It  is  probable  that  Sir 
Francis  did  not  much  fancy  the  commission,  but  he  was  too  politic 
to  seem  inditierent  to  interests  that  could  command  such  powerful 
intercession  as  that  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset.  This  view  of  the 
matter  seems  to  have  suggested  itself  to  the  Duke,  and  in  the  ho])e 
of  rendering  the  service  less  objectionable,  he  wrote  within  a  week 
afterwards  to  Sir  Francis  that  if  he  would  recommend  somebody  to 
"  bussle  and  stir  about "  in  the  matter,  —  somebody  tliat  he  could 
"  trust,"  to  "  ease  "  him  of  the  unpleasant  part  of  the  business^  —  the 
Maids  of  Honour  would  send  him  a  power  of  attorney.  He  knew 
there  would  be  dirty  work  to  do,  and  he  thought  a  Somersetshire 
Haroiiet  might  regard  it  as  beneath  his  dignity,  however  anxious 
he  might  be  as  a  politician  to  stand  well  with  persons  about  tiie 
t/'ourt. 

Now  read  Mr.  Macaulay's  account  of  the  great  Quaker's  position 
at  this  time,  and  imagine  the  surprise  with  whicli  the  Duke  would 
have  received  a  reply  from  Sir  Francis  to  the  effect  that  he  knew  an 
honest  fellow  by  the  name  of  William  Penn,  whom  he  thouglit  he 
could  trust,  and  that  he  was  just  the  man  of  all  otiiers  to  "  bussle 
and  stir  about  "  and  "  ease  "  him  of  the  dirty  work  in  the  premises, 
if  the  maids  would  send  him  their  power  of  attorney.  The  Duke 
would  have  thought,  no  doubt,  that  his  Tory  friend  in  Somersetsitire 
was  out  of  his  senses. 

Giving  the  parties  concerned  time  enough  to  exchange  letters  and 
look  up  a  suitable  person,  next  comes  the  important  letter  of  Sun- 
derland, which  was  theconscqtience,  no  doubt,  of  the  comniunicatioii 
from  Sir  Francis  Warre,  called  for  by  the  letter  of  Somerset.  This 
letter  Mr.  Macaulay  persists  in  regarding  as  proof  positive  tliat 
William  Pemi  accepted  the  commission  of  the  Maids  of  Honour,  and 
executed  it.     He  assigns  the  following  reasons  for  his  belief:  — 

1.  Because  Sir  James  Mackintosh  had  no  doubt  of  it. 

2.  Because  the  name  of  the  Quaker  was  sometinu's  spelt  I'enne. 

3.  Because  from  the  nature  of  the  transaction,  it  is  clear  that  the 
maids  of  hono.ur  would  have  naturally  selected  a  man  like  Williiim 
I'enn. 

4.  Because  Oldmixon,  wlio  names  other  agents,  was  the  least  trust 
worthy  of  historians. 

5.  Because  William  Penn  had  done  worse  things. 

To  this  we  reply,  —  !.  That  Sir  James  P/Iackintosh  had  nothing 
before  him  but  the  transcript  of  the  letter  from  the  St.ite  Paper 
Office,  addressed  erroneously  to  William  Penn.  He  had  thenforc 
no  reason  to  doubt.  What  his  judgment  was  on  the  evidence  bifore 
him,  furnishes  no  index  to  what  his  judgment  would  have  been  with 


458  APPENDIX. 

the  knowledge  that  the  letter  was  addressed  to  Mr.  Penne,  and  with 
the  additional  facts  in  relation  to  George  Penne,  now  before  us. 

2.  We  admit  that  no  conclusive  argument  can  be  drawn  from  the 
Bpelling  of  tlie  name.  But  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  in  the  absence 
of  i)roof  to  the  contrary,  that  a  letter  is  intended  for  the  person 
whose  name  is  correctly  spelled  on  the  address,  and  not  for  some- 
body else.  Nor  is  it  credible  that  Sunderland,  who  had  known 
Penn  from  his  boyhood,  should  not  have  known  how  he  spelled  his 
name,  or  should  have  failed  to  spell  it  in  the  same  way. 

3.  The  argument  drawn  from  the  respective  characters  of  the  two 
agents  is  conclusive,  but  not  in  the  sense  in  which  Mr.  Macaulay 
understands  it.  We  know  from  Somerset's  letters  the  kind  of  man 
the  maids  wanted.  The  more,  theretbre,  Mr.  Macaulay  magnifies  the 
social  standing  of  William  Penn,  and  detracts  from  that  of  George 
Penne,  the  more  firmly  he  establishes  that  it  was  George  and  not 
William  whose  services  the  maids  required;  that  it  was  George  and 
not  William  whom  Somerset  described  in  his  letter  to  Sir  Francis 
Warre;  that  it  was  George  and  not  William  whom  Sir  Francis 
recommended  as  answering  to  that  description  ;  and  that  it  was 
George  and  not  William  whom  the  Maids  of  Honour,  in  pursuance 
of  the  result  of  tliat  correspondence,  souglit  to  employ.  Sought  to 
employ,  we  say ;  because  there  is  not  a  scintilla  of  evidence  that 
any  body  by  the  name  of  Pen,  Penn,  or  Penne,  accepted  or  exe- 
cuted the  commission. 

4.  This  brings  us  to  Oldmixon,  who  tells  the  story,  and  gives  ua 
the  names  of  the  agents  in  tiie  following  terms  :  — 

"This  money,"  [the  sums  paid  for  the  pardons,]  "and  a  great 
deal  more,  was  said  to  be  for  the  Maids  of  Honour ;  whose  agent 
Brent,  the  Popish  lawyer,  had  an  under-agent,  one  Crane  of  Bridge- 
water,  and  't  is  supposed  that  both  of  them  paid  themselves  very 
bountifully  out  of  the  money  that  was  raised  by  this  means  ;  some 
instances  of  which  are  within  my  knowledge."  Oldmixon,  Vol.  2,  p. 
708. 

This  is  the  only  historical  statement  we  have  to  the  point,  and  it  is 
conclusive.  It  is  contemporaneous.  It  is  from  a  person  who  lived 
long  in  the  neighbourhood  where  the  events  took  place,  and  was 
favourably  situated  to  obtain  correct  information.  It  is  from  a  per- 
son, who,  if  he  mis-stated,  mis-stated  from  design,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  any  sufficient  motive  for  such  a  design.  Oldmixon  was 
a  Whig  partisan,  and  wrote  history  in  the  interest  of  the  Whigs. 
But  this  does  not  affect  his  credibility  where  no  question  of  partisan- 
ship is  involved.  Mr.  Macaulay  cites  him  over  and  over  again  in 
his  account  of  the  events  connected  with  the  insurrection  of  Mon- 
mouth, and  alludes  more  than  once  to  the  opportunities  he  enjoyed 


APPENDIX.  45.9 

of  being  specially  well  informed  in  regard  to  them.  It  is  too  late 
for  him  to  object  to  his  own  witness,  except  for  special  cause  shown  ; 
and  he  shows  no  special  cause  for  distrust  in  this  connection.  A 
witness  whose  uncontradicted  testimony  on  a  point  like  tiiis  cannot 
be  relied  upon,  ought  not  to  be  vouched  as  authority  for  anytliing. 

6.  With  regard  to  the  allegation,  thrown  in  as  a  makeweiglit, 
that  William  Penn  has  been  guilty  of  worse  things,  we  have  only  to 
say  that  in  doubtful  cases  a  man's  good  character  is  sometimes  given 
in  evidence,  but  we  are  not  aware  that  a  general  bad  character  can 
be  shown  to  aid  in  the  conviction  for  a  specific  crime.  What  would 
we  think  of  a  judge  who  should  attempt  to  obtain  the  conviction  of 
a  prisoner  charged  with  theft  by  insinuating  that  on  some  other  oc- 
casion he  had  committed  murder  f 

We  fear  that  in  this  case  we  must  say  of  Mr.  Macaulay,  as  Mr. 
Macaulay  said  many  years  ago  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  —  "  Of  intentional 
misrepresentation  we  are  quite  sure  that  he  is  incapable.  But  we 
caimot  acquit  him  of  that  unconscious  disingenuousness  from  which 
the  most  upright  man,  when  strongly  attaclied  to  an  opinion,  is 
seldom  wholly  free."  See  William  Penn,  an  Historical  Diajraphii,  hy 
Hepwortli  Dixon  ;  London,  1856,  pp.  xiv-xx.  2Vie  New  "  Examm,"  by 
J.  Pcufet,  Esq. ;  Edinburgh  and  London,  1861,  pp.  266-280.] 


ESD  or  VOL.  n. 


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